Category: Controversies

CDF “crackdown” on Marian apparitions?

Well, it can’t come too soon!
Petrus reports that the Holy Father has directed CDF to prepare an instruction for bishops on how to proceed with cases of alleged Marian apparitions and other alleged mystical phenomena.
The first step is to impose silence on the alleged visionary. And that step by itself is half the battle, because stopping the publicity associated with false mysticism limits the damage and confusion it can cause. Also, when false seers disobey such directives, they make the bishop’s job in identifying them much easier!
A rough English version of the article is available on-line as well.

Not looking forward to January 18

Some of my friends are getting geared up already for the sad anniversary of the Roe decision, hoping that their pastors will give the new administration’s pro-abortion policies the sound thrashing they deserve on January 18.
Oddly enough, I can’t be very upbeat about the prospect.
I’m glad that the bishops are encouraging the Catholic people to send a strong message against FOCA, the proposed pro-abortion law that would fund abortions with tax dollars and abolish the few existing legal limitations on procuring abortion, all of them democratically enacted by state legislatures, and all of them having already passed court challenges to their constitutionality.
And I hope that the Catholic people will send a strong message against FOCA. What I don’t look forward to is homilies against it.
In part, it’s because of my personal temperament: I find redundant talk rather annoying. And at least for me, preaching about the wrongness of FOCA is redundant. I’m not confused about the immorality of abortion, and most Catholics who attend Mass regularly are not confused about it either. At least according to surveys, churchgoing Catholics hold pro-life views, much more than do Catholics who don’t attend church, or non-churchgoers in general. So is this going to benefit the congregation?
Also, I’m not looking forward to the sort of sermon that my friends seem to like: I think it’s unfitting for the holiness of the Mass. They want to hear priests denouncing the sins so widely justified in elite secular society: immorality in marriage, unchastity, and the killing of the unborn; they want to hear their outrage expressed, and hear about the fire and brimstone; and some of the priests I know are happy to provide that. But in order to denounce these evils, they think they have to be rather blunt and rather angry; and the result is that the ugliness of these sins ends up invading the sacred liturgy, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There’s something bad about that.
Some of my friends complain that their priests don’t preach enough against sin, and they feel cheered when they hear a real barn-burner — at least when Father is denouncing sins that other people commit. But I think that our priests don’t preach enough about God.
In a sense, preaching about the moral law and thinking about the moral law come relatively easy to us; after all, people speak and reason and argue about right conduct all the time in private life and public life and even in secular society. But thinking about God and communicating to people about God are not so easy, and we don’t get a lot of that in our interactions with people in the secular world. So when we go to Mass and find in it the same sort of discourse that we get from secular voices, we’re missing something. The priest is missing an opportunity to feed souls with a word about God and the things of God.
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is more important than the evils of the world, and the holiness of the Mass, offered to God and made visible before man, does more good for the world than the finest words of moral instruction or correction.
Of course, the homily is a fitting place for moral instruction, but when the Mass is largely centered on the evils of society or of the state, a sort of profanation has happened. The Mass must never be instrumentalized, becoming primarily a means to accomplish a secular good, even a high good such as respect for life or some other grave matter of justice.
So I welcome announcements in church about the campaign against FOCA, and bulletin messages, and invitations to sign postcards; yet do not let the liturgy itself be profaned by excess.

“Petrus” interviews Fr. Laurentin

The Italian web site Petrus, “the on-line daily on the pontificate of Benedict XVI”, is presenting an interview with the renowned Mariologist Msgr. Rene Laurentin, who seems to be taking a surprisingly cautious stand on the Medjugorje apparitions he has promoted for over 25 years. Here’s my effort at a translation. (A note of caution: I’m only beginning to study Italian this year, so there are probably some flaws here.)
Fr. Rene Laurentin takes a step backward: “I have never expressed a positive judgment on the authenticity of the Medjugorje apparitions.” And a rebuke to those who want a proclamation of Mary as co-redemptrix
by Gianluca Barile
VATICAN CITY – Without a shadow of a doubt, Fr. Rene Laurentin represents one of the greatest authorities on the subject of mariology, the realm of theology that studies the figure of Our Lady and her role in the history of the salvation of man and of the world. For the past 40 years, after having been appointed an expert at the Second Vatican Council, the French clergyman has concerned himself with the principal Marian apparitions of history. In sum, a true expert, whose interview, granted exclusively to Petrus, will not fail to discuss both the Virgin’s role as co-redemptrix and the alleged apparitions of Medjugorje, from which Fr. Laurentin is unexpectedly distancing himself in these very pages. But let us take one step at a time.
Father Laurentin, in the Apocalypse of John, Mary prevails over the Dragon. Can we say, therefore, that next to the Holy Trinity, the Madonna is Satan’s most feared adversary?
“Chapter 12 of the Apocalypse is indeed the principal theological point that sets the Virgin and the Dragon in opposition, but already Genesis (3:15) says that the Woman, that is to say, Mary, will strike with her own heel at the seed of the devil. Furthermore, that the Madonna is the most feared adversary of Satan, next to the Trinity, is completely confirmed by exorcists and by Christian experience.”
In that regard, the greatest exorcists have been able to verify how the infernal spirits are stricken with terror when they hear the name of the Virgin pronounced and many of them even seem to bear respect to Her, calling her “the Lady”: can we affirm that she has received a sort of specific “mandate” on the part of God against evil?
“Very simply, as I was mentioning before, the Virgin is the enemy of the devil. And this is not because she received a specific mandate, but already through her Immaculate Conception. So to speak, the Madonna has been terrifying the evil one ever since she came into the world.”
In practically all the Marian apparitions, the Virgin exhorts us to the steady, daily, recitation of the Holy Rosary, declaring this pious practice the most powerful weapon against Satan. As a mariologist, do you consider the Holy Rosary more a Marian prayer or a Christological one?
“Christ and Mary are together only one thing: there is no dilemma! I don’t like the word “Marian”, because it has a specialist flavor and would have made the Virgin Mary laugh when she was walking to the well.”
Has Mary been made co-redemptrix of the world with her Son Jesus? In the Church one can’t speak of timing, but the hour doesn’t seem to have arrived for the proclamation of a dogma, although it has been requested by some initiatives and with the insistence of many bishops and cardinals (in particular) of Latin America. Don’t you think so?
“For 50 years I’ve been studying the role of Mary in the Redemption of the world. And from the beginning I have thought how unique this participation is. In any case, the title of co-redemptrix is ambiguous, often misunderstood, and in addition conflictual from a theological and ecumenical point of view. This is why I personally am against the definition of Mary co-redemptrix and I think those people who sign petitions, without knowing what they are doing, for the definition of a dogma ad hoc, would do better, seriously, to go deeper into the role of Mary in the Redemption. An important role, most important, but not comparable to the unique role of Jesus.”
In the “Salve Regina”, we call the Madonna “our advocate”: what role will the Virgin have when we find ourselves before the judgment of God? Will her judgment count toward the salvation of our souls? That is, will she be able to intercede before Jesus to alleviate our Purgatory?
“Mary is our mother: she loves, sustains, and defends her children. This is called intercession, but it would be mistaken to represent the Madonna in a naive way, occupied in a dialogue during which she takes our defense against God and against Christ, as some bad literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries portrayed. The action of Mary in relation to God is a heart-to-heart, in identification with the love to which she has arrived and which draws us. So there is no need for the Madonna to defend us before God, because He is not a wicked judge and, as Jesus already said in the Gospel (John 5:22), “the Father judges no one”. Furthermore, let us not forget that the Trinitarian function of God is even more maternal than paternal. Let’s read John 1:18: the Son is in the bosom of the Father.”
It is the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of Lourdes, but aren’t there other ones officially recognized by the Church (for example, Fatima). What does the Virgin want to communicate to us?
“For one thing, we recall that only 13 apparitions of Mary have been officially recognized, while a fourteenth has been accepted pastorally but not canonically by the bishop of San Nicolas in Argentina. Having said that, in regard to the messages, they are various, but at the same time, unanimous, inasmuch as they represent the simple echo of the Gospel and invite us to prayer, to conversion, to penance, to fasting, to the reading of the Bible, in various ways according to the times and the prophetic relevance of each individual message but without ever going beyond what is the doctrine of the Church.”
You are a supporter of the apparitions of Medjugorje, whereas many other prominent mariologists are skeptics. In your opinion, when will the Church declare herself on these manifestations? And, in the Vatican, why do they not appear to be convinced of the authenticity of the Medjugorje apparitions…
“At Medjugorje, the bishop is against the apparitions and his predecessor chose him precisely for that reason. Naturally, as everyone knows, the Holy See always takes the position of the local bishop as its own in such cases. Anyway, Cardinal Ratzinger had refuted the negative judgment of Bishop Zanic (in 1986), the first bishop in a position to confront the question of the apparitions. I am only an expert and I have no magisterium. And I never allow myself to give an opinion on the apparitions which I study. I only examine the facts, the reasons in favor and those against. I discern them, I explain them as clearly as possible, but I don’t give any judgment. If I had done that, I would have made greater difficulties for myself, which are already great enough, from the moment I involve myself so assiduously in this controversial phenomenon.”
Father Laurentin, what you are saying seems to be a step backward: you have written books upholding the thesis of the authenticity of the apparitions of Medjugorje…
“I say it again: I have never expressed judgments on the authenticity, at least of the apparitions; my studies are merely a small contribution to the Church and to the faithful…”
Staying with Medjugorje: particularly in that place, but also in other parts of the world, many Catholics put Mary before Christ. Many of the clergy do the same, in whose churches the presence of images of the Virgin predominates over those of the Crucified even on the facade of the rectory. Don’t you believe that the Madonna herself is not happy with all this?
“I think that the problem is the opposite of what you describe: Mary has become more undervalued than appreciated. Let’s try to think of all the Catholics who do not appreciate or recognize her as their mother.”
Father Laurentin, in conclusion, who should Mary be for us and who are we for her?
“I don’t like to repeat myself, but Mary is our Mother and our Queen: ‘More mother than queen’, St. Therese of Lisieux used to say, and rightly so. And as a consequence, we are ‘simply’ the children of the best, the most holy, and the most marvelous of mothers.”
(Thanks to Gianluca Barile for the permission to share his interview here, and a hat tip to Mark Waterinckx and kreuz.net for alerting me to it.)

The father of the Medjugorje affair is removed from ministry

[Update: For information on the subsequent laicization of Fr. Vlasic, see this post from July 2009. –RC]
Slowly, the corruptions surrounding the Medjugorje case are being dealt with.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has investigated charges and imposed sanctions against Fr. Tomislav Vlasic, OFM. Perhaps you’ve never heard of him.
Here’s the background. In 1981, Fr. Vlasic, a friar and parish priest in Yugoslavia, was distressed at having fathered a child by a Franciscan sister and having sent the mother away from Herzegovina to live and work in Germany. Struggling with his conflicting duties, he attended a Charismatic conference in Rome. There he was given a consoling “prophecy” of a Marian visitation. When he got home to Herzegovina and found that a bunch of teenagers was claiming an apparition, he stepped into the role of their spiritual advisor, got himself assigned to their parish, and shortly became an international religious celebrity.
Undeterred by his earlier co-ed religious experience, he felt inspired to try another one in 1987: together with a German laywoman, he founded a would-be religious community in Italy for young men and women all living together, called “Queen of Peace, we are totally yours”. He claimed that our Lady had approved the idea, and he kept it going even after the bishops of the place had rejected it and the Medjugorje seer who supported him confessed publicly that the heavenly endorsement was a falsehood.
Coming forward to 2008, it seems he’s been continuing the group all these years, as the CDF’s sanctions order Fr. Vlasic to have no contact with it or its members. Complaints to the CDF have accused him of “the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspected mysticism, disobedience towards legitimately issued orders and charges contra sextum.”
Perhaps it is the last point, charges of violating the sixth commandment, that caused CDF to take up the case, as particularly grave offenses against the sixth commandment — involving the abuse of minors or involving the misuse of the sacrament of penance — are reserved to CDF for judgment.
In perhaps the easiest matter to adjudicate, Fr. Vlasic has apparently incurred the penalty of interdict because of his refusal to return to the Franciscans and reside with them.
Moreover, CDF indicates there is a “suspicion of heresy and schism, as well as scandalous acts contra sextum, aggravated by mystical motivations” — so CDF has forbidden him to hear confessions, to preach, to conduct financial business; and has ordered him to undergo some theological training and be evaluated on his teaching.
At the request of CDF, the diocese of Mostar has published the Congregation’s statement on the case, and it follows here.

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