If putting a stethoscope in a man’s hand makes him disbelieve in miracles, will putting a clerical collar around his neck make him disbelieve in present-day apparitions?
It seems so. Cardinal Ottaviani, for example, while he was head of the Holy Office, saw to it that practically no apparitions of the Virgin, or very few of them, were “approved.” What kind of a logic is it that decrees, because Revelation came to its fulfillment and end in Jesus Christ, apparitions are therefore null and void?
Countless wonders throughout the history of the Church prove the contrary. The miracles and revelations associated with the saints, although not belonging to the deposit of faith, are all for our edification. How did Padre Pio, for instance, convert so many sinners, if not through the wonders God worked through him?
We cannot impose upon heaven any schema of our own. If the Virgin chooses to appear more frequently in the course of this century than in all of the previous centuries combined, who are we to find fault with this state of affairs? Before St. Francis, there is no record of any stigmatist. In this generation alone, there are stigmatized men and women by the dozen. This imbalance is God’s doing. I do not think we have to search long before we can assign a plausible reason for it.
Never has the world been more in need of redemption than today, given our massacre of the unborn. Today God is showing his scars in living tissue to convince our doubting Thomases, just as the Virgin is multiplying her appeals to prayer, penance, and conversion.
Contradicting the Learned
It is easy to find fault with what Mary is reported to have said during her early apparitions in Medjugorje, a small town in the former Yugoslavia. But how should we react to the countless number of confessions heard there daily, especially on the part of those who had neglected it for so long? As the late Cardinal Sin once said: “I do not know if the Virgin appears at Medjugorje, but I do know that numberless people who never set a foot in church come back from Medjugorje as devout, practicing believers.”
I have read about so many apparitions! What I find especially consoling is that something in each apparition always seems deliberately placed there by heaven to contradict the expectations of the learned. “I speak in parables so that hearing, they do not understand.” At Lourdes, Bernadette once “ate grass” and smeared her face with mud. On that occasion, the skeptics had a field day. If there is the slightest chance that the Mother of God is calling for prayer through the mouth of a seer in a specific place, who am I to think that this is no concern of mine?
What happens at a place of apparition? People recite the rosary. If going there is an incentive for me to recite the rosary, what should move me to say: “These are rosaries which are better left unsaid”? We all can vouch for the fact that, in the normal course of our life, we do not readily find the best conditions for fervent prayer. But what can equal those we find in the shrines of the Blessed Virgin?
Why Do We Neglect Her?
Distractions from prayer, or their purely mechanical repetition, are less likely when one knows that the Mother of God, though unseen by us, is physically present! If Mary goes out of her way to come to us, either in our neighborhood, or somewhere we can join her, why should we neglect her invitation?
Unfortunately, in nine out of ten places where she appears, the local bishop will not be supportive.
Take the case of that of Piacenza in Italy at the time of the apparitions of San Damiano in the ’60s and ’70s. Mama Rosa, the seer, was such a simple soul that despite her piety she could not, unaided, recite the mysteries of the rosary in the proper order. Imagine the surprise of the local priest when she started having “prophetic” dreams: “I dreamt our church was so full that half of the faithful could not find place inside.” And then she saw the Virgin. The priest was so impressed by the contrast between her simplicity and what she told him, that he took her to see the bishop. The bishop, however, refused to see her for more than a few minutes, and from then on did nothing except discourage people from coming to San Damiano. He sent the priest away; deprived the village of its daily Mass; and forbade Mama Rosa to receive the blessed Virgin in public, speak with the pilgrims, or communicate the messages she received. Mama Rosa obeyed her bishop, even though he prevented her from building a home for the sick and the aged with the funds she received from the pilgrims.
The bishop conducted no formal inquiry, and wrote to all the bishops of Europe asking them to forbid their faithful from coming to San Damiano. He tried to prevent the local mayor from building facilities for the pilgrims, and forced Don Pellacani (the priest who first heard of Mama Rosa’s visions) into retirement. All the while people from all over were reciting nine rosaries a day at the place of apparitions.
I myself spoke to Mama Rosa and would have been impressed by her intelligence had she not mentioned, before answering my questions, that “the heavenly Mother says. . . .” The pertinence of what she said then seemed beyond the reach of such a simple soul. That was before, upon the bishop’s orders, she had stopped speaking to the pilgrims.
Arguments Against Apparitions
There seems to be a widespread opinion that opposition to apparitions, or events apparently mystical in nature, is the hallmark of prudence, wisdom, and experience. “If God’s hand is behind these apparitions, whatever we can do to try to prevent them will only heighten their effectiveness!” Why is this opinion so widespread? It seems to run counter to the fact that God seeks out our cooperation and will not necessarily grant us his gifts if we oppose them forcefully. Man’s incredulity can thwart many of God’s designs.
In fact, we are told in the Gospels that Christ failed to work wonders among his own people “because of their incredulity.”
At Fatima, the Madonna did warn that, because her visionaries had been arrested by the police on a day that she was to appear, her final miracle there would not be as impressive as it would have been otherwise. It is ill-advised to think that our doubting the supernatural is the best means to a stronger faith.
Pascal once wrote that “Sickness is the natural condition of the Christian.” If we broaden that statement to say “our cross is our lot,” we are not far from affirming that the mystical state is natural for the Christian. And though some saints have not been gratified by visions, revelations, or miracles—as was the case of the Pere de Foucauld—most saints have. And though this is not what constitutes their holiness, it is nonetheless related to it.
In summary, six kinds of arguments are marshaled against Marian apparitions, whenever they occur:
1. Revelatio sufficit: St. John of the Cross is quoted as saying that Revelation, such as it is transmitted to us by Scripture and the Church, is all we need to know for our eternal well-being.
Although Revelation is sufficient for those who live by it, there remains in most of us a need for that extra lift or shove that shakes us out of our complacency and restores our fervor.
2. Gamaliel dicit: “If this counsel or this work have its origin from men, it will be destroyed; but if it be from God you will not be able to put it down.” Although Gamaliel is not directly quoted, the gist of his argument is clear. We should be wary of reading into the designs of providence, but we should be even more careful not to assume that God will perform all that is necessary without our active cooperation and prompt response.
3. Beelzebub vicit: “It is through Beelzebub that the devils are cast out.” Thus, so many conversions, wonders, or spiritual benefits are attributed to the devil, who is using an apparent good to bring about evil. This argument often has been used against saints and mystics, both by their superiors and their Devil’s Advocates alike.
Sister Yvonne-Aime, the Malestroit who promptly became mother superior of her religious order, and under whose guidance vocations blossomed and foundations bloomed, was almost demoted and removed from office by well-meaning churchmen for whom the very success that crowned her efforts were deemed to stem from the devil himself. Thus she who was to be the most highly decorated woman in France because of her help to the Resistance—the advice she gave saved the lives of all the underground fighters who followed it—was almost prevented from accomplishing this good work on the basis of the Beelzebub argument.
4. Deus non minacit: Our God is a God of love, mercy, and forgiveness. We must, however, distinguish between the punishment inflicted by justice as retribution for sin, and the chastisement imposed by mercy for the betterment of the sinner. That the warnings issued by the Virgin are those of a Mother aware of the danger in which her children—through their own repeated transgressions—have placed themselves, should be perfectly clear. What is more, when she evokes catastrophes that will befall mankind on account of our disobedience, these do not seem far removed from those of Revelation.
5. Charismatici sunt schismatici: As we have seen, this argument has a baleful past in Church history. Today where social dynamics are the fad, however, there is a heightened fear that schismatic tendencies are at work whenever groups meet without ecclesiastical approval, the participation of priests, or hierarchical supervision. The comparative freedom of initiative that the Church surrendered to the laity as a result of Vatican II has not allayed the suspicion that, left to themselves, the faithful are readily prone to deception, superstition, or spiritual fads.
This argument, unfortunately, often creates the very situation that it decries. The local bishop refuses to be in attendance, lest his presence be construed as approval. Neither does he send a priest, or even allow one, to witness the apparitions for fear this should be interpreted as an implicit recognition of the supernatural nature of the events in question. The seer is left without guidance and the flock without a shepherd. It is amazing that such conditions do not lead more often to those schismatic tendencies that so often are invoked as an argument against giving credence to apparitions in the first place.
5. Logorrhea res humana: The quantitative factor is the most objectionable characteristic of Marian apparitions today: There are too many of them; they go on forever; and the Virgin doth speak too much.
Padre Pio, however, once answered this objection most pertinently by turning the argument around: “How many more times must the Blessed Virgin appear before she is taken seriously.”
Extraordinary Remedies
We are living through a crisis in faith and religious observance. Our century has known the worst kind of secularism in history. If the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost most often takes the form of apostasy, of what greater sin could the present world be convicted?
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary remedies. Or so it seems. Can we be sure that heaven has not chosen the moment of the greatest need for its greatest display of compassionate mercy? And through the most effective means: the Virgin Mary?
Has she not intervened already several times in the course of history: at Lepanto to save us from the Ottoman Turks; at Fatima to save us from the communist peril?
What is she striving to save us from now, if not what Pope John Paul II is fervently trying to prevent: the loss of faith in God’s own Church?
To take a stand on principle against apparitions or to argue for them involves, implicitly, a reading of divine intent. Is this presumptuous or normal? Aren’t we as Christians constantly called upon to interpret signs and wonders? Pascal’s superb quotation seems a most appropriate conclusion: “If God sent us his messengers, we would surely listen to them. Events are those messengers.”