Errors in the Writings of Mystics

[Dan_Defender]

I am reading ‘City of God’ by St Augustine and he wrote it in the 4th-5th century. There is one part of the book where he discusses the final judgment and he mentions that the corresponding Bible verses always address ‘men’ but they also must include women (of course), and very casually he says ‘because men are the worthy sex’. This one sentence for our modern times is of course shocking but it clearly reflects the attitude towards women of old times. Now am I going to throw the whole wisdom and enlightenment of his book because of this one ‘error’? of course not! so my advice is just move on and focus on all that helps you grow spiritually not on the small things that don’t seem to make sense.

 

[thistle]

If I’m not wrong, don’t many Christians think Earth is around that age?

Yes, many falsely believe that despite the plethora of scientific evidence showing the earth is around 4.5 billion years old.

 

[Brendan_64]

It’s a fact because Blessed Anne Emmerich was mostly illiterate. She could not have written her revelations down herself. She relied on Clemens Brentano to do that.

Which of itself does not mean that the account he transcribed is therefore false. That she didn’t physically pick up a pen and write down the account herself does not mean that what was written is likely to be false.

 

[Crocus]

That she didn’t physically pick up a pen and write down the account herself does not mean that what was written must be false.

Even so, there is absolutely no way of determining at this time so removed, what exactly was said and how or whether any point was embellished. I read the account many years ago so only going by my impression, I consider it pious thoughts and dreams received then translated by a gifted poet. She was very ill throughout and suffered great pain. We don’t know how that might affect the thoughts she related.

Readers of the account, having good knowledge of Church teaching, should carefully discern what they are able to gain from reading such personal accounts.

 

[TK421]

It’s a very different issue the OP is getting at though. Yes, saints are citizens of their time period just like anybody else and carry that cultural baggage with them.

The alleged recollections of a canonized woman says that she had a mystical experience. She is a saint and practiced a high degree of virtue so presumably she wouldn’t dare just make something up about Jesus. That would be a grave sin. Still, I think the thread has already given some satisfactory answers.

 

[Brendan_64]

Even so, there is absolutely no way of determining at this time so removed, what exactly was said and how or whether any point was embellished.

And you could say the same about any accounts given by saints who either could not, or did not, physically write down their own accounts. Are we to suspect all such accounts if the author hasn’t physically penned them?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Which of itself does not mean that the account he transcribed is therefore false. That she didn’t physically pick up a pen and write down the account herself does not mean that what was written is likely to be false.

The Catholic Church has deemed his writings to be so unreliable, they did not consider them when deciding upon her beatification. That to me suggests they are highly suspect. You are free to read them and think what you like about them.

However, your original question was “is it a fact that Blessed Anne didn’t write her revelations”. The answer is yes, it’s a fact, because she didn’t write them. She didn’t even dictate them word for word to be transcribed, because he was not able to take notes in the room talking to her.

Now you’re changing your question to be “are the books written about her revelations by Clemens Brentano true or false”. This is a different question from what you asked. The answer is we don’t know, we’ll probably never know, but the Church thinks they are unreliable, and will never endorse them as true at this point.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

And you could say the same about any accounts given by saints who either could not, or did not, physically write down their own accounts. Are we to suspect all such accounts if the author hasn’t physically penned them?

It wasn’t just a case of her not physically penning them. The Vatican investigators did research into his notes, and what he actually wrote in the books. They found a lot of problems. They also found he had a lot of source material on Jerusalem and other related topics in his possession that he may have used to pad out his stories.

You know and I know it’s not normal for the Church to completely set aside books purportedly written by a candidate for sainthood. The fact that they would do so suggests that the Church investigated and determined there was a serious problem with the writings. Obviously it’s not a problem with Blessed Anne’s holiness or she wouldn’t be making miracles and being beatified.

I’m not sure why you’re having an issue with this when it is a decision of the Church to suspect these Brentano writings and no one has said Blessed Anne herself is anything other than a holy beati.

 

[Brendan_64]

However, your original question was “is it a fact that Blessed Anne didn’t write her revelations”. The answer is yes, it’s a fact, because she didn’t write them. …

… but the Church thinks they are unreliable, and will never endorse them as true at this point.

OK, fair enough, she didn’t physically write them.

In the last part of your sentence quoted, did you mean to write ‘never’? If so, that is quite an assertion to make.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I can soften it to “probably never”, but why would they endorse books that have been through two separate Vatican investigations to my knowledge, and still found problematic?

They can canonize her, if they wish, without approving or endorsing the book. They aren’t condemning the book either, so if somebody wants to read it, fine; they just don’t see it as reliably being written by Blessed Anne.

The Church never approves the vast majority of private revelations. The situation with this one does not lead me to believe it will be an exception.

 

[Brendan_64]

The Church never approves the vast majority of private revelations. The situation with this one does not lead me to believe it will be an exception.

And does this lack of approval imply that a private revelation is likely to be fraudulent?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

No, but in this case we have more than just a lack of approval, we have statements from the Vatican examiners indicating that they think Brentano wrote some of the material attributed to Blessed Anne.

From the Catholic News Service article I posted above:

… her mystic writings received only a passing reference during the Mass, and the pope did not mention them at all in his sermon.

Before the liturgy, Vatican experts said the writings had been discarded as evidence during the sainthood review process because it was uncertain whether she actually wrote the book. “We simply cannot say for certain that she ever wrote this,” Jesuit Father Peter Gumpel told Catholic News Service Oct. 1. Father Gumpel helped study the issue for the Vatican’s sainthood congregation. Sister Emmerich was practically illiterate, and her visions were transcribed and elaborated by a popular romantic poet, Clemens Brentano, who published them after Sister Emmerich’s death at age 49 in 1824.

Father Gumpel said it is today impossible to distinguish what came from Blessed Emmerich and what was added by the poet Brentano. Therefore, the writings were disregarded by the Vatican, he said.

From the New Yorker article I posted above:

When Emmerich was first put forward for beatification, in the nineteen-twenties, Church examiners concluded that Brentano, not Emmerich, was the author of most of her visions, and that they were literary inventions, not divine revelations. (After Brentano’s death, in 1842, examiners discovered in his library detailed guidebooks about Jerusalem.) In the early nineteen-seventies, when Emmerich was again proposed for beatification, the authorities resolved to consider only the circumstances of her saintly life, such as the fact that for her final ten years she subsisted entirely on water and Communion wafers.

Again, no one is accusing Blessed Anne of fraud. The accusations are directed against Brentano, who published his books after she died, and even those who used the word fraud (I think it was specifically John O’Malley in “America” Magazine) said he meant well. Brentano’s actions have made it impossible for us to sort out Blessed Anne’s actual revelations from whatever he likely added.

In short, Blessed Anne is a holy beati who may one day be a canonized saint.
The books by Brentano attributed to her are unreliable. And not approved private revelations.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Fatima is not a private revelation but a public prophetic revelation.

At the end of the day, Fatima is indeed a private revelation.

However, 70,000 people all witnessing something perceived as visible to the senses, and having even secular news reports verifying what people experienced — with photographs, today it would be videotape and digital media — is about as “public” as public gets.

Note well: the 70,000 did not hear Our Lady speak, nor did they receive messages, nor did they see her. They just saw certain phenomena in the sky, and those who were there at the moment experienced heavy rain and damp clothes, then the weather suddenly turned, with a warm breeze drying them. These could have been “sun dogs” and a massive temperature inversion, but even if they were, how did Lucia predict these would happen at precisely the time the crowds were assembled? (Just to give the devil his due — figuratively speaking — was inland central Portugal subject to rapid, dramatic extremes of wind and temperature at a certain time of the day, similar to the way that often-violent thunderstorms occur in central Florida almost every afternoon like clockwork during the summer?)

Much to ponder. I accept Fatima wholeheartedly, but I do not condemn those who come to a different conclusion.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Fatima, like Lourdes are private revelations according to the Church

We’re not required to believe them

 

[thistle]

And does this lack of approval imply that a private revelation is likely to be fraudulent?

Not generally but in this specific case probably.

 

[Leferdion]

In the case of Catherine Emmerich, she did not write down her visions. She dictated them and someone else wrote them down. It has been reported many times that the guy who wrote her visions added his on bias and changed some things which he personally did not think made sense. So that could be the cause of some of the errors. The mystic Maria Valtorta’s writings on the life of Christ is different and I think more reliable because she wrote down the visions herself, almost immediately as they were happening. In any case, we are not bound to believe private revelations of the mystics because they are just that, private revelations. Even if they make mistakes in communicating to us their private relations, it does not in anyway make them less holy because holiness is judged on other criteria like virtue and so on

 

[Leferdion]

I disagree. Jesus could never be wrong. He could not be mistaken, even if He chose to humble Himself and learn things. If He could prophesy about the future (He did not learn prophesy from Mary or Joseph right?), then why do we think He will not know the past?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The mystic Maria Valtorta’s writings on the life of Christ is different and I think more reliable because she wrote down the visions herself, almost immediately as they were happening.

In the case of Maria Valtorta, the book she personally wrote with her alleged revelations, “Poem of the Man-God”, was condemned by the Holy Office in 1960 and was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, where it still remained up to the time the Index was abolished in 1965. In 1985, Cardinal Ratzinger acting as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated that “the Index retains its moral force despite its dissolution”. So Maria’s book and her alleged revelations have actually been condemned by the Church and continue to be condemned. Not just unapproved, but actually condemned, as in, the Church doesn’t think Catholics should even read it.

I edited this because I am not sure if Maria Valtorta currently has an open sainthood cause. It’s possible her cause may have been submitted to the Vatican, I’m not sure from what’s on the web, but I would expect that as long as her book still is regarded as condemned by the Vatican (regardless of her promoters trying to claim that this bishop and that bishop gave it an Imprimatur and that Pope Paul VI liked the book and Mother Teresa liked the book etc), the cause isn’t going to go anywhere.

 

[sealabeag]

Yes you’re seeing my point, thanks. I have received fairly satisfactory answers, yes, although there is still an element of uncertainty I’ll just have to accept, methinks.

 

[paperwight]

In the case of Catherine Emmerich, she did not write down her visions. She dictated them and someone else wrote them down.

But she didn’t, you see. That is to say, she didn’t dictate her visions in the normal sense of somebody sitting in the same room taking down her dictation like a boss with a secretary.

She told them to Brentano, who was not able to take notes, (See post 55) but relied on his memory afterwards to write about them.