Norms for discernment of apparitions and revelations

In 1978, CDF wrote a document of norms to guide bishops in judging alleged apparitions and other private revelations. While the document has never been published, copies were sent to bishops after Pope Paul VI approved it, and they have used it in cases of alleged private revelation since then.
While it is not permitted to publish the Latin text, some authors have published translations of the text in books and on the Internet, and have contributed to understanding the Church’s thinking on the issue of private revelations.
Those translations, due to their writing style, or due to inconsistencies, have made me wonder about what the original text says. In some cases, there are translations based upon other translations, adding an additional layer of possible imprecision.
For this reason, I was happy to join the efforts of writer Kevin Symonds and a priest colleague a few weeks ago to produce a new translation of the Norms from the Latin text. I’ve posted a copy on Scribd, and I hope it will be of use to pastors and interested readers.

4 comments

  1. Well that’s a weird coincidence. I was just gonna e-mail you about your Medjugorje documents site. It’s gotten a bad rating on WOT (Web Of Trust), so I was thinking you could put all the documents on this site or something.
    Kevin has a great site with lots of information on it, but he’s kinda slow on approving comments. But I guess he’s busy or something, so I let it slide. Anyway, maybe you should make, like, a table of comparison of the original Latin and the different translations of it. I wish more people would do the same for the Bible, too.

  2. I’ve already relocated my Medjugorje document site to archive.gabrielmass.com/documents/ , so I hope that that change resolves whatever problem you saw at “Web of Trust”. The old site was at tripod.com, and apparently WOT rates anything at tripod.com low for safety.

  3. Can y’all do some commentary on the suppression of the “Intercessors…”…they are linked to M., I believe, and there is a general interest here.
    Thanks!

  4. The Intercessors were indeed most likely linked to Medjugorje:
    “One of the ways I really felt, by the way, that Medjugorje was authentic. This was quite some time ago when there were almost no Americans there yet, so we had an opportunity to meet everybody. We asked one of the visionaries if we could leave some prayer intentions because we wanted some prayer, particularly for Bellwether, at that time. And she said, “No. No.” When I asked why I was told that Our Lady had told them that they were not to do any prayer ministry or take any intentions for at least two weeks.”
    Source: Mother Nadine Brown’s charism of intercession
    However, one must be careful to not associate the group with the event (apparitions), because evil can even crop up where good is present, just as good can crop up where there is evil.

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