established in the Council of Trent, the local bishop is the first and main authority in apparition cases, which can be defined as instances of private revelation. From the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent:
And that these things may be the more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains, that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual image, in any place, or church, howsoever exempted, except that image have been approved of by the bishop: also, that no new miracles are to be acknowledged, or new relics recognized, unless the said bishop has taken cognizance and approved thereof; who, as soon as he has obtained some certain information in regard to these matters, shall, after having taken the advice of theologians, and of other pious men, act therein as he shall judge to be consonant with truth and piety. But if any doubtful, or difficult abuse has to be extirpated; or, in fine, if any more grave question shall arise touching these matters, the bishop, before deciding the controversy, shall await the sentence of the metropolitan and of the bishops of the province, in a provincial Council; yet so, that nothing new, or that previously has not been usual in the Church, shall be resolved on, without having first consulted the most holy Roman Pontiff.26
In the decades following the council, the Church became increasingly vigilant about protecting the faithful against alleged private revelation and, in general, against the expression of ideas deemed dangerous. With the development and popularity of the printing press, many anti-Catholic documents and reformed versions of the Bible became widely available. The Catholic Church sought to protect the faithful from publications deemed heretical, anti-clerical, or lascivious and created a list known as the Index of Forbidden Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) in 1559. In addition to books deemed dangerous in science and philosophy, writings on unapproved private revelation would make the list. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V established the Roman Inquisition (also known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition) and fourteen other congregations in the Roman Curia.
Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), the future Benedict XIV, provided several rules for discernment of private revelations and the miracles needed for the canonization of saints in De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione in 1740. Such events must present themselves to human reason as being truly extraordinary and beyond the scope of natural causes. He answered the question of whether the incorruptible corpses of saints could be used as evidence of sainthood, insisting that the cases considered miraculous had to be bodies close to perfectly preserved over the course of many years.27
In the twentieth century, the Church continued its efforts to contain the wide dissemination of information on alleged phenomena and reinforced the bishop’s role as judge of the authenticity of private revelation. The Code of Canon Law of 1917 (canon 1399, no. 5) forbade the publication of anything about “new apparitions, revelations, visions, prophecies, and miracles” without the local bishop’s approbation. The local ordinary is to consult someone (known as the censor librorum) whom he considers competent to give the doctrinal content of the publication the stamp of nihil obstat (“nothing forbids”), at which point the local ordinary grants the mark of imprimatur (“let it be printed”).
On December 7, 1965, following Pope Paul VI’s motu proprio Integrae servandae reconstituting the Holy Office as the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and effectively dropping the Index of Forbidden Books from being overseen by any congregation, a CDF notification of June 14, 1966, published in the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano,28 announced that, while the Index maintained its moral force in teaching Christians to avoid those writings that could endanger faith and morals, it no longer had the force of Church law and its repercussions.
In 1966, Paul VI, implementing Vatican II’s statement on the right of the mass media to information, lifted the requirement that all writings about private revelation need ecclesiastical approval before publication, repealing canons 1399 and 2318 from the Code of Canon Law of 1917. With this change and the disappearance of the Index, the floodgates for claims of private revelation had been opened. Fr. René Laurentin, the world’s foremost Mariologist, acknowledged the change in apparition trends by labeling the rise “an explosion of the supernatural” and expressed concern that the reports of apparitions had become frequent, “numerous and even disturbing.”29 He found this to be such a paradigm shift that he divided the almost 2,500 apparitions catalogued in his comprehensive work, Dictionary of the Apparitions of the Virgin Mary, into two parts: (1) apparitions in Christian history before 1966 and (2) those occurring after.
The most recent CDF document and the current standard that lays out the guidelines for the judgment of apparition claims is the Normae Congregationis de Modo Procedendi in Diudicandis Praesumptis Apparitionibus ac Revelationibus (Norms of the Congregation for Proceeding in Judging Alleged Apparitions and Revelations), approved by Pope Paul VI on February 27, 1978, and written sub secreto in Latin for the eyes of bishops alone. The document was later publicly produced in translations released to the bishops. With these official translations having been leaked to the Internet and other unofficial translations abounding online, the Vatican formally released five translations of the document more than two decades later on May 24, 2012, admitting knowledge of its previous availability in the introduction by William Cardinal Levada.30 The purpose of the document, as indicated by Levada in his introduction, is to
aid the Pastors of the Catholic Church in their difficult task of discerning presumed apparitions, revelations, messages or, more generally, extraordinary phenomena of presumed supernatural origin…. [May it also] be useful to theologians and experts in this field of the lived experience of the Church, whose delicacy requires an evermore thorough consideration.
The Normae Congregationis sets out the procedures to be followed in investigating the authenticity of extraordinary claims. The document clarifies the role of Church officials in investigating the authenticity of claims of private revelation. There are four ways the competent ecclesiastical authority is to act with respect to a claim of private revelation. The authority can or must:
1. Inform himself without delay and keep vigilance over the claim.
2. Promote some form of cult/devotion at the request of the faithful if the above negative and positive criteria do not prohibit it.
3. Intervene on his own initiative, especially in grave circumstances.
4. Refrain from intervening in doubtful cases, but remain vigilant.
Bishops evaluate evidence of private revelation according to these guidelines:
1. The facts in the case are free of error.
2. The person(s) receiving the messages is/are psychologically balanced, honest, moral, sincere, and respectful of Church authority.
3. Doctrinal errors are not attributed to God, the Virgin Mary, or to a saint.
4. Theological and spiritual doctrines presented are free of error.
5. Moneymaking is not a motive involved in the events.
6. Healthy religious devotion and spiritual fruits result, with no evidence of collective hysteria.
St. Philip Neri (1515–1595) was often brought in by bishops to give his opinion on the authenticity of mystics. With a careful eye on obedience and humility, he was able to ferret out false mystics with great success. One day in 1560, the cardinals were discerning about a nun who was having visions. Since they sought his opinion, Philip went to see the young sister. He kindly said to her, “Sister, I didn’t want to see you; I wanted to see the saint.” The nun answered, “But I am the saint!” and Philip was able to report confidently to the cardinals that her visions were not from God.31
Judgment
