How should Catholics treat private revelations?
How should Catholics treat private revelations?
It is essential that Catholics grasp the relationship between private revelations and Catholic teaching. The Church's magisterium cannot be replaced or supplied by private revelations.
“There is the danger of a one-sided and an imperfect direction in holiness, and of laying great stress on trifles and things of secondary importance.”
Editors’ Notes
It is dogma that public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle.
Nonetheless, throughout history God has made private revelations to chosen souls, even for the public good. Consider the revelations made to St Joan of Arc, which led to the victory of France over English rule, or the revelations of the Sacred Heart to St Margaret Mary Alacoque. In our time, we can call to mind the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal.
We believe believe that the Fatima revelations have an ongoing importance for our time – and that many of our problems are related to their being neglected.
But what place, in general, should such private revelations have in the life of the average Catholic?
The Mariavite Disaster
A case in point: the image above is of Maria Franciszka Kozłowska, a “mystic” condemned as heretical by St Pius X in 1906.
This movement started with “conservative” things such as marian devotion, eucharistic adoration and a reform of the morals of the clergy – but there were serious distortions. The condemnation caused a schism in Poland. It created the “Mariavite” sect with around 600,000 (clergy and laity) leaving the Catholic Church, choosing their private revelations over ecclesiastical authority.
It ended with things like female ordination.
To answer this, we are republishing an article from The Casuist,1 which was a compilation of moral theology questions that were answered in The Homiletic Monthly and was published in 1906. You can also see a discussion on the relationships between such revelations, theology, and how we make decisions in the current crisis here:
Sadly, some of those who most need clarity on private revelations will not realise this to be so. There is a tendency amongst some traditionalist Catholics to think that they are safe from falling into errors or other problems, and to trust uncritically the clergy to whom they have attached themselves. They may read the text below without seeing that they are moving in a troubling direction, or they may find reasons to show how what they are doing is different to what is described.
Nonetheless, we hope that the republished extract and commentary prove useful to some.
Exaggerations
There is a temptation to make apparitions and revelations the centre of the spiritual life, even to the detriment of learning basic sound doctrine. This comes with certain dangers, particularly a lack of proportion. An exaggerated interest in private revelations can cause distortions in theology and in decisions in the current crisis, as is common with some interpretations of the Fatima apparitions.
This is to say nothing of those revelations which have not received that approval, or have even been condemned.
But things can go another step further when Catholic social action becomes too overtly tied to such things. The world’s recent problems are related to the liberty of the Church, the social rights of Christ the King, Catholic social doctrine and the right ordering of society, and the true nature of law and liberty. It seems quite wrong to link Catholic action with private interpretations of private revelations.
The relative difficulty in hearing the voice of a living hierarchy in our day does not transfer the power of magisterium from the Church to private revelation, seers, miracle-workers or dreamers of dreams. On the contrary, our duty in this time is to adhere firmly, immovably to tradition, as found in the acts of the ‘quasi-contemporary magisterium’ (as the theologian Nicolau says) and the monuments of tradition, particularly traditional theology.
With all this in mind, let us turn to the article from The Casuist.
Concerning the Perusal of Private Revelations
The Casuist, 1906
(UK readers click here)
1. There are many persons, especially women endeavouring to lead a holy life, who occupy themselves a great deal with so-called revelations made to pious persons, even to the exclusion of all other spiritual reading matter. Sometimes such persons study the revelations made to some particular saint, drawing all their spiritual nourishment from them; then having their appetite whetted by the perusal of one book of this kind, they eagerly devour anything of the same nature that they are able to lay hold of. They believe in these revelations as firmly as they believe in the Gospels and are strongly disposed to brand as heretics, or at least as suspects, all who do not put the same faith in them as they do themselves. This disposition alone is sufficient to prove that the perusal of these private revelations is not a healthy, spiritual exercise for all indiscriminately, and it becomes necessary from time to time to instruct the faithful on this head.
2. That there may be, that there have been, and that there are at present revelations made to private individuals is beyond question. We are speaking, of course, of revelations made to holy and devout persons, which have been investigated by the Church and declared to contain nothing against faith or good morals. No positive ecclesiastical approbation is ever given to such revelations.
3. When the Church revises and approves revelations and visions in this sense, all she does is to certify that these visions and revelations contain nothing against the “rule of faith,” the “regula fidei“; so that the faithful may believe them without injury to their faith (pie creditur) and use them as a guide to conduct without fear of believing or doing anything unauthorized by the Church. Where the Church has thus given her approval to any particular private revelation, it is no longer permitted to ridicule or to despise it. Fas non est, says Card. Franzelin, tales revelationes contemnere (de div. trad. 22). To do so were to fail in the respect due to the Church. But not to believe the revelation is no sin against the obedience we owe the Church. For the Church, by her approval or quasi-approval of these revelations, has no intention of obliging the faithful to believe them. Whoever believes in them, does so fide humana, and not fide divina, at least not fide divina Catholica. “In spiritual things,” says Catherine Emmerich, “I never believed anything except what was revealed by God and proposed for my belief by the Catholic Church. What I saw in visions I never believed in this way.”
4. The body of revealed truth, necessary to salvation and bearing the seal of infallibility, was completed and closed, once for all, by the teachings of Christ and the apostles. When the Church defines a new dogma, she simply declares authoritatively that it is contained in the teachings of Our Lord and the apostles. Just as private revelations do not bear the seal of infallibility, so neither do they bear the mark of inerrancy. There is no divine inspiration guaranteeing the correct recording of private revelations, as is the case with the Holy Scriptures, even though the fact of the revelations has been established. Private revelations are exposed to a threefold danger. The understanding may err in receiving the revelation. The memory may fail in recording orally or in writing the contents of the revelation. The tongue may err in its effort to clothe the revelation in human words. Moreover, as Bened. XIV remarks, notions and ideas acquired previous to the revelation may be confounded by the person receiving the revelation with the things learned in the revelation, and thus the saints have sometimes considered things to have been revealed to them which were in nowise revealed. Hence the contradictions in different revelations.
5. The supernatural communication, therefore, as well in its reception as in its transmission, may be unwittingly falsified. The Holy Scriptures alone are preserved from such falsifications. And thus it happens that the private revelations of different holy persons contradict one another openly, and in many things.
6. All that the Church says, therefore, when she lends her approval to the private revelations of the saints or other holy persons, is that these revelations may be believed “fide humana” [human faith], and that they are adapted and may be used for the edification of the faithful. The declaration of Benedict XIV does not contradict this: “When the Church has examined and approved these visions, no one may any longer doubt their supernatural and divine origin.” The Pope speaks only of their origin, and not at all of their contents, nor of their correct reproduction. And even a refusal to believe in their divine origin would not be a sin against Catholic faith.
7. After these theoretical remarks let us add a few words of a practical nature. The reading of these visions and private revelations is in nowise adapted to the needs of ordinary people, even though they may have correct notions about the credibility of private revelations. Many of these revelations are beyond the needs and the intelligence even of persons already far advanced in the spiritual life, and are often clothed in language quite unintelligible. And herein precisely lies a new source of anxiety, because a new danger, namely, the danger of understanding the revelation in a wrong sense, which may easily lead to positive error and sin against the “rule of faith.”
8. Besides the danger just mentioned there is another, namely, the danger of a one-sided and an imperfect direction in holiness, and of laying great stress on trifles and things of secondary importance. But what is worst of all is that the reading of these revelations gives rise to secret spiritual pride and makes silly pious people, for it is such persons that are most addicted to this kind of reading, that imagine themselves farther advanced in the ways of perfection than others and think that they know more about matters of faith and morals than most other people, even more than the priests themselves.
9. It may cause some surprise if we add a warning for members of religious orders, especially of women. As a general rule, it is not advisable to make use of histories of private revelations, made to pious and holy persons, for general community reading. And those in authority in religious communities should be very slow to allow individual members of the community to make use of the same for their private reading. Women in religious orders who are endeavouring to lead holy lives are more apt to evince a weakness for what is extraordinary than for what is ordinary in their quest of perfection, than their sisters in the world. They prefer the revelations of St. Brigitta or of St. Gertrude to an ordinary introduction to the spiritual life. And it is precisely those who are by no means firmly grounded in the spiritual life who hanker after what is higher before they understand or put into practice the most ordinary and necessary requirements of spiritual growth. In the case of religious the evil effects of this kind of reading are more pronounced and more disastrous than in the case of lay people, and they sometimes create disturbance and division in an entire convent.
10. Some may think these remarks and warnings too severe and even exaggerated. And such indeed were the case did we apply them, a priori, to all private revelations. They hold good only for those who read indiscriminately, and without selecting, especially revelations made to holy persons in times long gone by, and which are profoundly mystic, not to say apocalyptic in their presentation. Simple books, and books that may be readily understood, like the visions of Catherine Emmerich concerning the life and sufferings of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, are much to be preferred to others, and we would even recommend them.
Source: The Casuist, Vol. I 1906 (UK readers click here), also available at the Internet Archive.
Further Reading
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