It is long overdue to tackle the false prophets, writes Mike Lewis
On Tuesday, May 7, the Vatican Press Office announced that a press conference will be held on May 17 where the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) will present a new document containing provisions for discerning the authenticity of claimed apparitions and other supernatural phenomena.
The last general document on discerning the authenticity of apparitions was prepared by Cardinal Francis Šeper and approved shortly before the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978.
History
The 1978 document, Norms regarding the manner of proceedings in the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations, was not initially issued to the public, but was sent out to the bishops as an aid in discerning how to respond to alleged supernatural phenomena in their dioceses. It was finally released publicly by the Vatican in 2011, after it contents were leaked and shared widely in the years that followed.
In his 2011 Preliminary Note for the official publication of the 1978 norms, Cardinal William Levada wrote: “Today, more than in the past, news of these apparitions is diffused rapidly among the faithful thanks to the means of information (mass media).” Levada also observed that the “modern mentality and the requirements of critical scientific investigation render it more difficult, if not almost impossible, to achieve with the required speed the judgments that in the past concluded the investigation of such matters”.
“Popular movements surrounding alleged visionaries and prophets will grow and get out of hand”
Levada’s commentary on the Church’s inability to respond quickly to reported supernatural phenomenon reflects a significant challenge for the Church. All too often, popular movements surrounding alleged visionaries and prophets will grow and get out of hand before Church authorities even begin looking into them.
Ireland
One Irish example of this phenomenon is Christina Gallagher’s House of Prayer in Achill, which, according to the most recent statement from the Archbishop Francis Duffy of Tuam, “has no Church approval and the work does not enjoy the confidence of the diocesan authorities”. The House of Prayer has been in operation since 1993, but it was not until 2008 that the archdiocese widely announced that its activities are “entirely of a private nature and has no Church approval whatever”.
The internet has only increased the rapidity with which unapproved apparitions have spread. Veteran Vatican reporter John Thavis recalled in his book The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age, the Irish internet visionary known as Maria Divine Mercy’, who offered fairly conventional end-of-the world prophecies until she hit paydirt in 2013 due to a 2012 prediction that Pope Benedict would be forced out as pope and replaced by a false prophet.
Following the election of Pope Francis, Maria Divine Mercy became something of an internet sensation. Thavis wrote: “People poured over her supposedly divine messages, which had been translated into thirty-eight languages and now numbered more than eight hundred, along with more than one hundred supernaturally dictated ‘crusade prayers’, five litanies, and twenty other invocations.”
“These messages should not be promoted or made use of within Catholic Church associations”
The messages spread like wildfire around the world. The truth of her identity came out in a 2013 blog article, revealing the visionary’s true identity as Mary Carberry-McGovern, a middle-aged public relations executive living in Dublin.
Once her identity was known, many reached out to her archdiocese, asking the archbishop to address Maria Divine Mercy. Thavis opined, “In cases like this, the last thing Church authorities desire is to create a martyr by acting in a public and punitive manner.” But finally, in April 2014, the archdiocese posted a notice on its website stating: “Archbishop Diarmuid Martin wishes to state that these messages and alleged visions have no ecclesiastical approval and many of the texts are in contradiction with Catholic theology. These messages should not be promoted or made use of within Catholic Church associations.”
Thavis observed, “By now, however, the effort was like trying to stop a runaway train. The prophecies continued unabated, and a few months later her Facebook ‘likes’ had increased to 350,000.” It wasn’t until 2015, when a major story in the Irish Mail linked McGovern-Carberry to Maria Divine Mercy and exposed the lucrative business her messages had become, that the site was shut down.
Lessons
Hopefully the upcoming Vatican document will help and encourage bishops to respond more attentively to and publicly to such phenomena before they spread widely and develop worldwide followings.
“A Vatican pronouncement regarding the supernatural character of the event would not be appropriate”
This will be the second document on the subject of apparitions and similar phenomena the DDF will have published since Cardinal Victor Fernández was named prefect last year. The first document was a letter published in October, about an alleged series of miracles in the Archdiocese of Como, Italy. Cardinal Fernández’s assessment of the phenomenon is generally favourable, but his response, which is signed by the Pope, states that a Vatican pronouncement regarding the supernatural character of the event would not be appropriate.
Exceptions
In fact, Cardinal Fernández notes: “After 1933, the then Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office never directly intervened again in recognising the supernatural character or the authenticity of alleged supernatural phenomena.” Nevertheless, Cardinal Fernández encourages the continued support of this devotion by the local Church. He writes, “This Dicastery finds no difficulty should Your Eminence decide to continue in the pastoral appreciation of this spiritual experience. In fact, it is hoped that, treasuring the spiritual fruits that have flowed forth in these years, the proclamation of the merciful love of the Trinity may be intensified: the love that stimulates conversion in people and that bestows the grace of abandoning oneself with filial trust.”
“New alleged apparitions from Catholics opposed to Pope Francis have gained publicity”
Positive experiences, such as that in Como, seem to be the exception. In recent years, new alleged apparitions from Catholics opposed to Pope Francis have gained publicity, such as in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Texas, where Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Fuller recently suppressed a group in his territory that was promoting the alleged locutions of one of its members, including a message that Pope Francis was an ‘antipope’. Last year, a Franciscan sister in Columbia claimed Pope Benedict XVI appeared to her to tell her that Francis was a false Pope and that his death was “a case of slow euthanasia”.
Popularity
Across North America, the condemned apparitions and apocalyptic prophesies of the French Canadian priest Fr Michel Rodrigue have gained widespread popularity. In Ireland, Dom Mark Kirby of Silverstream Priory had his supposed locutions from God collected in bestselling book, In Sinu Jesu, before he was revealed to be an extremely troubled figure. Across the internet, there are all kinds of websites promoting unapproved apparitions and apocalypticism, including ‘Countdown to the Kingdom’ — a warehouse of the statements of unapproved visionaries and theologically dubious end-times prophecies. All of the publicity for these dime-store prophets has been fuelled by the internet.
The number of everyday pewsitters in ordinary parishes who are taken in by seers and prophets who are not sanctioned by the Church is astounding. These modern visionaries wield enormous influence over the many Catholics who buy their books, watch their videos, and attend their speaking events.
“Hopefully they will do something that will curb the influence of false prophets”
I don’t know what Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernández plan to say about discerning the truth about claims of supernatural phenomena, but they have an enormous mess on their hands that the Church has hardly begun to address. Hopefully they will do something that will curb the influence of false prophets.
New document from the Vatican on apparitions and miracles
It is long overdue to tackle the false prophets, writes Mike Lewis
On Tuesday, May 7, the Vatican Press Office announced that a press conference will be held on May 17 where the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) will present a new document containing provisions for discerning the authenticity of claimed apparitions and other supernatural phenomena.
The last general document on discerning the authenticity of apparitions was prepared by Cardinal Francis Šeper and approved shortly before the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978.
History
The 1978 document, Norms regarding the manner of proceedings in the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations, was not initially issued to the public, but was sent out to the bishops as an aid in discerning how to respond to alleged supernatural phenomena in their dioceses. It was finally released publicly by the Vatican in 2011, after it contents were leaked and shared widely in the years that followed.
In his 2011 Preliminary Note for the official publication of the 1978 norms, Cardinal William Levada wrote: “Today, more than in the past, news of these apparitions is diffused rapidly among the faithful thanks to the means of information (mass media).” Levada also observed that the “modern mentality and the requirements of critical scientific investigation render it more difficult, if not almost impossible, to achieve with the required speed the judgments that in the past concluded the investigation of such matters”.
Levada’s commentary on the Church’s inability to respond quickly to reported supernatural phenomenon reflects a significant challenge for the Church. All too often, popular movements surrounding alleged visionaries and prophets will grow and get out of hand before Church authorities even begin looking into them.
Ireland
One Irish example of this phenomenon is Christina Gallagher’s House of Prayer in Achill, which, according to the most recent statement from the Archbishop Francis Duffy of Tuam, “has no Church approval and the work does not enjoy the confidence of the diocesan authorities”. The House of Prayer has been in operation since 1993, but it was not until 2008 that the archdiocese widely announced that its activities are “entirely of a private nature and has no Church approval whatever”.
The internet has only increased the rapidity with which unapproved apparitions have spread. Veteran Vatican reporter John Thavis recalled in his book The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age, the Irish internet visionary known as Maria Divine Mercy’, who offered fairly conventional end-of-the world prophecies until she hit paydirt in 2013 due to a 2012 prediction that Pope Benedict would be forced out as pope and replaced by a false prophet.
Following the election of Pope Francis, Maria Divine Mercy became something of an internet sensation. Thavis wrote: “People poured over her supposedly divine messages, which had been translated into thirty-eight languages and now numbered more than eight hundred, along with more than one hundred supernaturally dictated ‘crusade prayers’, five litanies, and twenty other invocations.”
The messages spread like wildfire around the world. The truth of her identity came out in a 2013 blog article, revealing the visionary’s true identity as Mary Carberry-McGovern, a middle-aged public relations executive living in Dublin.
Once her identity was known, many reached out to her archdiocese, asking the archbishop to address Maria Divine Mercy. Thavis opined, “In cases like this, the last thing Church authorities desire is to create a martyr by acting in a public and punitive manner.” But finally, in April 2014, the archdiocese posted a notice on its website stating: “Archbishop Diarmuid Martin wishes to state that these messages and alleged visions have no ecclesiastical approval and many of the texts are in contradiction with Catholic theology. These messages should not be promoted or made use of within Catholic Church associations.”
Thavis observed, “By now, however, the effort was like trying to stop a runaway train. The prophecies continued unabated, and a few months later her Facebook ‘likes’ had increased to 350,000.” It wasn’t until 2015, when a major story in the Irish Mail linked McGovern-Carberry to Maria Divine Mercy and exposed the lucrative business her messages had become, that the site was shut down.
Lessons
Hopefully the upcoming Vatican document will help and encourage bishops to respond more attentively to and publicly to such phenomena before they spread widely and develop worldwide followings.
This will be the second document on the subject of apparitions and similar phenomena the DDF will have published since Cardinal Victor Fernández was named prefect last year. The first document was a letter published in October, about an alleged series of miracles in the Archdiocese of Como, Italy. Cardinal Fernández’s assessment of the phenomenon is generally favourable, but his response, which is signed by the Pope, states that a Vatican pronouncement regarding the supernatural character of the event would not be appropriate.
Exceptions
In fact, Cardinal Fernández notes: “After 1933, the then Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office never directly intervened again in recognising the supernatural character or the authenticity of alleged supernatural phenomena.” Nevertheless, Cardinal Fernández encourages the continued support of this devotion by the local Church. He writes, “This Dicastery finds no difficulty should Your Eminence decide to continue in the pastoral appreciation of this spiritual experience. In fact, it is hoped that, treasuring the spiritual fruits that have flowed forth in these years, the proclamation of the merciful love of the Trinity may be intensified: the love that stimulates conversion in people and that bestows the grace of abandoning oneself with filial trust.”
Positive experiences, such as that in Como, seem to be the exception. In recent years, new alleged apparitions from Catholics opposed to Pope Francis have gained publicity, such as in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Texas, where Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Fuller recently suppressed a group in his territory that was promoting the alleged locutions of one of its members, including a message that Pope Francis was an ‘antipope’. Last year, a Franciscan sister in Columbia claimed Pope Benedict XVI appeared to her to tell her that Francis was a false Pope and that his death was “a case of slow euthanasia”.
Popularity
Across North America, the condemned apparitions and apocalyptic prophesies of the French Canadian priest Fr Michel Rodrigue have gained widespread popularity. In Ireland, Dom Mark Kirby of Silverstream Priory had his supposed locutions from God collected in bestselling book, In Sinu Jesu, before he was revealed to be an extremely troubled figure. Across the internet, there are all kinds of websites promoting unapproved apparitions and apocalypticism, including ‘Countdown to the Kingdom’ — a warehouse of the statements of unapproved visionaries and theologically dubious end-times prophecies. All of the publicity for these dime-store prophets has been fuelled by the internet.
The number of everyday pewsitters in ordinary parishes who are taken in by seers and prophets who are not sanctioned by the Church is astounding. These modern visionaries wield enormous influence over the many Catholics who buy their books, watch their videos, and attend their speaking events.
“Hopefully they will do something that will curb the influence of false prophets”
I don’t know what Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernández plan to say about discerning the truth about claims of supernatural phenomena, but they have an enormous mess on their hands that the Church has hardly begun to address. Hopefully they will do something that will curb the influence of false prophets.
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