One thing I’ve never understood: if I am not bound to accept any private revelation as authentic, why does the Church put these feasts (eg: Our Lady of Fatima, Guadalupe, Divine Mercy, etc.) on the Church’s calender?
(Please do not respond with attacks on private revelation per se, or any particular revelations. Likewise, please do not respond by asking “Why don’t you believe in the revelations?” -I never said I didn’t- or by saying “There’s no reason not to believe, for the Church has approved them, and have you investigated it more than the Church?” etc.)
The placing of the feast on the calendar does not imply any judgment on the status of a private revelation which you can still not believe unless it concerns some dogma. Feasts rest on their own grounds rather than directly for a private revelation. Take, for example, the Sacred Heart. Undoubtedly the visions to St. Margaret Mary influenced the spread of the devotion,and also that the day of the feast was influenced by the revelation to her and so forth. But strictly speaking, the Church proposes the devotion to the Sacred Heart in and of itself because it recalls to the minds of the faithful the immensity of Divine Love.The same thing, you’ll observe, applies to the Divine Mercy.
What, however, about the more “apparition” based feasts? For one thing, the fact that a feast is on the calendar only means that it is not theologically unsound, and is even probable. For example , long before the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was declared, many order (beginning with the Franciscans) were permitted to celebrate a Mass of the Immaculate Conception. One of the reasons that the Church grants it is to satisfy the pious belief of those who feel it is true.
Secondly, as before, the apparition itself is not necessarily what is celebrated liturgically. Usually (and I say usually because its not always followed) the Collects are general exemplifying some virtue of our Lady or whatever it is.
For example, with OL Guadalupe, both the collects for the Mexican Proper Mass and that approved for the Church merely view our Lady is terms of her patronage of the Americas and the people without a real judgment on the apparition. It may (or may not) have happened, the collect does not presume to say, but under the title we recognize our Lady’s special connection to the place. The collect for the USA does give some weight to the apparition but is again slightly vague- it speaks of God who “blessed the Americas at Tepeyac with the presence of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe”
Again with OL of Fatima the collect says nothing about the apparition. What then are we celebrating by observing OL Fatima? Not necessarily that there was an apparition (though as I said above, public devotion is an important factor in granting a feast, and many who celebrate the feast do so because of the apparition) but what is proposed is the example of our Lady in encouraging us to pray and do penance - which is true whether you accept Fatima or not.
There is however a certain history of Apparitions in the calendar with two feasts particularly of the BVM- Lourdes and Loretto- I’ll try and post on that later. In the meantime, it may itnerest you to read this piece by a Jesuit in response to a Protestant on passages that were, at the time, before the revision of the breviary, contained in the Church’s liturgical books.
archive.org/details/modernromaniumil00osboiala
