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Chapter 2

What Should We Do with Miracles?

The question of the role of miracles in our life of faith is an important one and requires avoiding two extremes: an overemphasis and credulity regarding the supernatural on the one hand and a denial of the possibility of divine intervention and a diminishment of the role of popular devotion on the other. Sometimes it is hard to discern the amount of emphasis we should place on what St. John XXIII called “those supernatural lights.”

Excessive, obsessive expression of belief by the faithful in miraculous phenomena is not only the reason the Church is methodical and cautious in approving any occurrence as authentic but also a primary impetus for performing any investigations in the first place. The unspoken goal of such examination is to prove that nothing supernatural is occurring at these places, in order that the faithful might return to a more authentic and grounded practice of their faith. But because there is typically such a tremendous swell of support and interest surrounding a purported miraculous event, the Church by necessity must investigate and provide pastoral guidance on the matter.

Although seeking miracles is often an attempt to quench an authentic thirst for the spiritual and an opportunity to quell spiritual doubts, miraculous phenomena are not a substitute for absolute faith in God. The center of the Catholic Faith can be found in the person, acts, and words of Jesus Christ. A great demonstration of true faith comes in a story about St. Louis (King Louis IX of France from 1226 to 1270). While St. Louis was working in his study, a courier came running in to inform him of a miracle happening at that very moment: an image of the infant Jesus appeared on the host during Eucharistic adoration. The saintly king calmly continued his writing and quietly responded: “I could not believe more firmly in Christ’s presence in the Eucharist if I were to behold a miracle.”¹⁶

Private revelation can serve as the special insights of saints who received messages from the Blessed Mother. The content of such messages does not belong to the deposit of faith, and as such, belief in approved private revelations — even in the most highly recognized and celebrated miraculous events like Fátima and Lourdes — is never required by faith. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican body with the final word on miracle claims, acknowledged this fact but warned against ignoring the signs given to us by God:

No apparition is indispensable to the faith…. But we certainly cannot prevent God from speaking to our time through the simple persons and also through extraordinary signs that point to the insufficiency of cultures stamped by rationalism that dominate us.¹⁷

The Church is clear about the role of private revelations but devotes a mere eight lines to the topic in its official compilation of doctrine for the faithful, the Cathechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states:

Throughout the ages, there have been so-called “private” revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church. (CCC 67)

It is not uncommon for believers to be swept up in chasing the latest miracle or alleged message from the heavens. Caught up in a sort of modern Gnosticism — the seeking of gnosis, or secret knowledge — people hunger for any hidden information they can garner about the return of Christ. This often results in end-times fanaticism or an apocalyptic view of current world events. Therefore, Cardinal Ratzinger reminded the faithful about private revelation — and Marian apparitions in particular — and its primary Christocentric purpose:

To all curious people, I would say I am certain that the Virgin does not engage in sensationalism; she does not act in order to instigate fear. She does not present apocalyptic visions, but guides people to her Son. And this is what is essential. The Madonna did not appear to children, to the small, to the simple, to those unknown in the world in order to create a sensation. Mary’s purpose is, through these simple ones, to call the world back to simplicity, that is, to the essentials: conversion, prayer, and the sacraments.¹⁸

Without full knowledge of all the facts surrounding alleged phenomena, it is important for the faithful to rely on the judgments of the competent ecclesial authority — the local bishop — in providing pastoral guidance on these matters. The bishop safeguards his flock from being exposed to theologically unsound private revelation or other dangers related to the pursuit of alleged phenomena. The University of Dayton’s International Marian Research Institute identifies the requisite obedience of Catholics to the discernment of the local bishop as dictated by canon law:

As the bishops are entrusted with the responsibilities of discerning and ruling on apparitions as stemming from the nature of their office, so there are fundamental responsibilities on the part of the members of the diocese. First, they are to obey their bishops when the episcopate acts as Christ’s representatives (canon 212), that is, when they teach formally or establish binding discipline as pastors of a particular church. This obedience owed to the bishops in their capacity as leaders of particular churches is intended to promote the common good. Canon 753 also speaks of the “religious assent” owed to the bishops’ teaching authority, which means a special quality of respect and gratitude, along with critical awareness and good will. Therefore, there should be intelligent obedience to ecclesiastical authority in the matter of alleged apparitions.¹⁹

Not only must the faithful follow the guidance of the bishop on these delicate matters, but also, more importantly, the alleged mystic and his corresponding organizations must be open to the guidance of authority. Sometimes the process is imperfect, considering that a local bishop might be personally biased against a certain miraculous claim or might want to limit the distraction that such phenomena can bring. A sensible rule of thumb might be: “A superior may or may not be inspired by God in his command, but you are always inspired in obeying.”²⁰

In many of the cases of phenomena rejected by Church authorities, disobedience has been prevalent. One ongoing example is Maureen Sweeney-Kyle, who began to claim visions in 1996 and created the “Holy Love” movement in Elyria, Ohio. After various warnings and guidance, Richard Lennon, Bishop of Cleveland, on November 11, 2009, issued a decree declaring the events not supernatural, forbidding the participation of priests and laity in those events, and prohibiting the organization from calling itself Catholic. Despite the statement, Holy Love still continues under ecumenical auspices. Likewise, the initially promising apparitions claimed by Mary Ann Van Hoof in the 1950s in Necedah, Wisconsin, were condemned due to many factors, including the disobedience of the visionary. An enormous shrine was later erected and still exists today as part of an Old Catholic sect.

Conversely, authentic mystics have shown obedience at times of great difficulty. In his September 1, 2010, General Audience, Pope Benedict lauded the obedience of St. Hildegard von Bingen, who later became one of the Doctors of the Church:

As always happens in the life of true mystics, Hildegard too wanted to put herself under the authority of wise people to discern the origin of her visions, fearing that they were the product of illusions and did not come from God…. This is the seal of an authentic experience of the Holy Spirit, the source of every charism: The person endowed with supernatural gifts never boasts of them, never flaunts them and, above all, shows complete obedience to the ecclesial authority.

The widely practiced and well-known devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus stems from the revelations of Jesus to the French nun St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in a series of apparitions from 1673 to 1675. On one occasion, Jesus told St. Margaret Mary to do something, but her superior did not approve it. Jesus reminded her:

Not only do I desire that you should do what your superior commands, but also that you should do nothing of all that I order without their consent. I love obedience, and without it no one can please me.²¹

And later Our Lord told her:

Listen, My daughter, and do not lightly believe and trust every spirit, for Satan is angry and will try to deceive you. So do nothing without the approval of those who guide you. Being thus under the authority of obedience, his efforts against you will be in vain, for he has no power over the obedient.²²

Obedience played an important role in perhaps the most famous instance of the Church’s changing its stance on the assessment of private revelation — the universally approved and widely celebrated Divine Mercy devotion, originating in visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary as received by Polish nun St. Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938). Initially prohibitions were placed on the messages of the apparitions by the local bishop and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This condemnation was finally lifted in 1978 through the work of St. John Paul II, who later not only canonized St. Faustina but also established a feast on the General Roman Calendar. Celebrated on the Sunday after Easter, the feast day includes specific indulgences that are granted under the usual conditions. These great honors and devotions occurred only after many years of obediently ceasing public celebration or distribution of the message found in Faustina’s Diary. St. Faustina wrote about the challenges of pride: “Satan can even clothe himself in a cloak of humility, but he does not know how to wear the cloak of obedience” (Diary, par. 939).

St. Padre Pio, the famous Capuchin friar from Pietrelcina, is another exemplary model of obedience. Because of the need to investigate his tremendous mystical gifts, reportedly including the stigmata, bilocation, and the ability to read souls, and because of the public curiosity surrounding those gifts, Church authorities suppressed his ability to say Mass publicly. St. Pio was obedient until his death in 1968 and was canonized in 2002.

For all the many instances of inauthentic or invalid devotions and miracle claims being shut down, throughout history in countries around the world, Church authorities have validated hundreds and even thousands of reports of miraculous events. The majority of the occurrences that have any level of ecclesiastical sanction enjoy a traditional mode of approval. That is, if they occurred in the era prior to the Council of Trent (1545–1563), their approval typically was rooted in enduring tradition resulting from popular acclaim and a strong sensus fidelium, or universal acknowledgment from the faithful. It wasn’t until the beginning of the seventeenth century that miracle claims were more rigorously investigated and began to rely on science in addition to the prayerful discernment that had marked investigations of the past. In establishing an event as having supernatural character and being worthy of belief, the bishops and their investigative commissions hope to use scientific inquiry and modern technology to arrive at these difficult decisions with moral certitude that the alleged miracle cannot be attributable to natural causes or human delusion. But even if science cannot offer explanations about the phenomena that often purported divine messages, Christian faith cannot accept “revelations” that claim to surpass or correct the revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects that base themselves on such “revelations.”