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Private Revelations: Warp and Woof

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2024

C. C. Martindale S.J.
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At times, reading the strange stories of the Saints, we may feel: ‘This incident cannot be true: it jars on my artistic sense; it conflicts with my knowledge of history; it is “out of keeping” with theology'. Then we may feel irreverent; that it may be we who are ‘out of tune’ with sanctity. On the one hand, ever since the future Benedict XIV's De. • • beatiftcatione etc., ii. c. 32, it has been clear that the Church does not and cannot demand the assent of faith to any ‘private revelation'; but ecclesiastical approbation can ask our human belief in them according to the rules of prudence which offer them to us as probable and piously believable. The encyclical Pascendi (ASS; vol. xl; p. 649: 1907) says that the Church, when allowing the publication of such events, does not go guarantee for their truth, but simply does not prevent matters being published for which motives of human belief are not lacking.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 2 , Issue 20 , February 1948 , pp. 336 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © 1948 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 At Fatima, Lucia saw the Holy Child in St Joseph's arms; Jacinta and Francisco standing at his side. I do not know why Mr Walsh, in his book on Fatima, says (p.147) Joseph was dressed in white. The only questionnaires I can find (Uma Senhora,pp. 179, 190) say that both he and the Child were dressed in brignt red, encarnado.

2 Compare St John Gualbert who, having made (on Good Friday) a tremendous act of sacrifice for the love of Christ, knelt before a crucifix and felt it lean forward and embrace him. But in this instance the crucifix was a painted icon.

3 Or even a pure spirit. I do not think that modern writers are inclined to say that e.g. angels invest themselves with a ‘body of air’ to make themselves visible, as medieval writers frequently suggested.

4 Fr E. Dhanis, S.J., of Louvain published a discussion of the events there as recorded in the contemporary interrogations (1917) and much amplified by Lucia in 1936 and 1941, in the Dutch review Streven, and has kindly communicated to me his French version of his notes. He alludes to two points which had specially puzzled me. In 1941 Lucia wrote that the three children had had a triple vision of an Angel in 1916. Her mother told Canon Formigão (October, 1917) that about that time (September or October, 1916) the children had seen a sort of sheeted form of ‘silhouette'. The Canon asked Lucia why, when he interrogated her, she had not mentioned that. No answer. That time you ran away? I think I ran away’.