Vatican City, May 13, 2017 / 01:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Asked by journalists about the alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, Pope Francis said the original apparitions more than three decades ago deserve further study, but voiced doubt in the supposed ongoing visions.
He stressed the need to distinguish between the two sets of apparitions, referencing a report submitted to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by a commission set to study the apparitions by Benedict XVI in 2010.
“The first apparitions, which were to children, the report more or less says that these need to continue being studied,” he said, but as for “presumed current apparitions, the report has its doubts.”
“I personally am more suspicious, I prefer the Madonna as Mother, our Mother, and not a woman who’s the head of an office, who every day sends a message at a certain hour. This is not the Mother of Jesus. And these presumed apparitions don’t have a lot of value.”
He clarified that this is his “personal opinion,” but added that the Madonna does not function by saying, “Come tomorrow at this time, and I will give a message to those people.”
However, Francis emphasized the need to differentiate between the initial
Pope Francis spoke to the 70 journalists on board with him during his May 13 flight from Fatima back to Rome. The presser followed a two-day trip to mark the centenary of the Marian apparitions that occurred in Fatima in 1917. During the visit, he also canonized two of the young visionaries, Francisco and Jacinta Marto.
While the Fatima apparitions have long been approved by the Vatican and local bishops, debate continues to cloud discussion over the authenticity of the alleged appearances in Medjugorje.
The apparitions allegedly started June 24, 1981, when six children in Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, claimed to have witnessed apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
According to the alleged visionaries, the apparitions conveyed a message of peace for the world, a call to conversion, prayer and fasting, as well as certain secrets surrounding events to be fulfilled in the future.
These apparitions are said to have continued almost daily since their first occurrence, with three of the original six visionaries claiming to have received apparitions every afternoon because not all of the “secrets” intended for them have been revealed.
In April 1991, the bishops of the former Yugoslavia determined that “on the basis of the research that has been done, it is not possible to state that there were apparitions or supernatural revelations.”
On the basis of those findings, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith directed in October 2013 that clerics and the faithful “are not permitted to participate in meetings, conferences or public celebrations during which the credibility of such ‘apparitions’ would be taken for granted.”
However, Benedict XVI established a commission, headed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, to study the topic in further detail.
In January 2014, the commission completed their study on supposed apparitions’ doctrinal and disciplinary aspects, and was to have submitted its findings to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The congregation has yet to submit its final document to the Pope for a final decision.
Pope Francis told journalists that Ruini’s report was “very well done,” and that there are three main takeaways that must be kept in mind when thinking of the report.
First, he stressed the importance of studying the first apparitions of 1981 as their own entity, and attached to this was the second point on the need to be wary of the alleged ongoing appearances, always distinguishing between the two.
Third, he emphasized the need to also look at the pastoral and spiritual dimensions of Medjugorje, because “people go there and convert. People encounter God, change their lives.”
This isn’t a result of “magic,” he said, but is a valid spiritual and pastoral fact that “can’t be ignored.”
[…]
About our “understanding of Christian doctrine in its development”–and freeing ourselves of mutant signaling and insinuations during the past decade–in “The Development of Christian Doctrine” Newman appeals, in part, to a biological analogy whereby growth (“development”) is one thing, while corruption is another.
He writes:
“I venture to set down seven notes of varying cogency, independence, and applicability to discriminate healthy developments of an idea from its state of corruption and decay, as follows: “There is no corruption if it retains:
(1) One and the same TYPE [doctrine/natural law v. a disconnected degree of pastoral “accompaniment” devolving into accommodation],
(2) The same PRINCIPLES [the non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction v. neo-Hegelian interpretations of the ambivalent “time is greater than space”],
(3) The same ORGANIZATION [the received Barque of Peter as from a supernatural source v. natural religions more as expressions of unaltered human searching]
(4) If its beginnings ANTICIPATE its subsequent phases [the Incarnation/Creed/ Catechism/Veritatis Splendor v. normalization of “choices” in place of moral judgments, as in the homosexual lifestyle, etc.];
(5) Its later phenomena PROTECT and subserve its earlier [Veritatis Splendor/ Familiarus Consortio v. social science (?) as the source of alternative truths];
(6) If it has a power of assimilation and REVIVAL [Evangelization and inculturation v. incongruous amalgamation as with Amazonia/der Synodal Weg], and
(7) A vigorous ACTION from first to last…” [lively steadfastness v. the mess of constant change as the deepest rut of all].
Let us hope it is Newman’s WRITINGS that will inspire the Church Peter.
A great saint and example for non-catholics. Not so sure about his notions concerning “illative”, intuitive knowledge though.
By definition, we cannot prove “illative” knowledge, but it helps make sense of why we know that another person, even the Divine Persons, love us. We know the truth of this interpersonal love on many mysterious levels.
Try reading the Bible and everywhere there is the word “faith” replace it with “relationship.”
Faith or belief in the love of another person is more than math. Think also of the revealed fact that the Holy Angelic Persons love us. Happy Feast!
Thank you for remembering my Feast Day. Certainly faith, and beyond that, mystical knowledge, can provide men with certitude regarding religious matters. But Henry Neman’s illative knowledge was viewed as a natural human faculty.As such, it’s not faith or mysticism. It could be regarded as another human means of strengthening faith, but it would be fatal to the Faith to confuse it with a supernatural thing in itself. I think such ideas had a lot to do with the romantic atmosphere of the nineteenth century which, by confusing natural faculties with the supernatural, risked emptying the latter of its real, very distinct, reality.