What does "approved" apparition mean? Did it happen or not?

[jmisk]

There have been several Marian apparitions.
Some of these are “approved” by the Church.
If they are allowed to be accepted or if it is allowable to read the messages from Mary at Fatima does that mean that they did actually happen?
If they did actually happen then why are those message from Mary codified and added to scripture?
If they did not happen wouldn’t the Church ask that people not visit the sites?

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Approved means that the messages did not contradict faith and morals.
There’s a process they have to go through , and one of the stipulation is that the messages have to have stopped.

It would be if no use of the early messages were benign and wholesome, then later on, the messages go off the rails.

 

[jmisk]

So let’s take Lordes for example
I am able to pilgrimage there and see the site and pray there and even accepts that the events recorded did in fact take place.

So if the church allows me to do that why does that apparition not become some form of official church history/doctrine.

And if there any reason not to include the sayings of Mary at these events NOT being added to sacred Scripture? What would be the argument not accepting non-conflicting statements of Mary to scripture?

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

There’s an historical/theological reason behind it, but I’m a little out of my depth

Basically it boils down to the Council of Trent declared that nothing new is added to the Deposit of Faith after the death of the last Apostle.

I know it’s pretty nuanced, and there’s people here way better able to discuss this than me

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Approved means that the messages did not contradict faith and morals.

Actually, there’s a LOT more to it than that for an approved apparition. The bishop also considers factors such as the character of the person reporting seeing the apparition, the fruits of the apparition, and the probability of this actually being a private revelation, i.e. something supernatural. They also look at negative criteria, such as if the seer seems to be pursuing financial gain from reporting the apparition. Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of the process.

Marian apparition - Wikipedia

An apparition could be “approved for faith expression” only, which would mean the apparition itself isn’t approved and isn’t disapproved, but it’s okay to practice some devotion relating to it, such as saying a prayer, wearing a medal the seer claimed Mary showed to her, etc. The purported messages from an apparition might also be written down and distributed in a book or pamphlet and that book or pamphlet could have a nihil obstat and imprimatur which state that the messages don’t contain errors of faith or morals. But none of that is the same as approving an apparition.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

I was hoping somebody else would weigh in on this

 

[Tis_Bearself]

And if there any reason not to include the sayings of Mary at these events NOT being added to sacred Scripture? What would be the argument not accepting non-conflicting statements of Mary to scripture?

I’ll quote straight from the Wiki article on this one:

According to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, the era of public revelation ended with the death of the last living Apostle. A Marian apparition, if deemed genuine by Church authority, is treated as private revelation that may emphasize some facet of the received public revelation for a specific purpose, but it can never add anything new to the deposit of faith. The Church may pronounce an apparition as worthy of belief, but belief is never required by divine faith.

Bottom line is that the deposit of faith ended when the last Apostle, which I believe would have been St. John the Evangelist, died. Nothing is added after that.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

It’s tricky stuff, especially since the Church rarely says anything one way or the other about a purported apparition. I am thankful for the Miracle Hunter website. It’s reasonably comprehensive, but a bit clunky to look things up on if you don’t know in advance what category something falls in.

 

[jmisk]

An apparition could be “approved for faith expression” only, which would mean the apparition itself isn’t approved and isn’t disapproved, but it’s okay to practice some devotion relating to it, such as saying a prayer, wearing a medal the seer claimed Mary showed to her, etc.

Blockquote

That makes very little sense.
If I wrote a book that said Jesus is Lord. That clearly doesn’t conflict with church teaching.
But that’s merely repeating or stating something that the church has already received and kept as truth.

An apparition n though either occurred or not. So the church fence sitting and saying that you can have devotions to an event because the truths of the event aren’t in conflict to church teaching makes little sense to me.

If the Blessed Virgin appeared that’s a very big deal.
If St, Joseph appeared and said one sentence, that’s a huge deal since he never spoke in scripture.

I just don’t see how there can be any room to have or support a devotion to an event that the Church won’t acknowledge it happening 100% or did not happen 100%.

If it did happen the words of Mary at these appearances should be added as an appendix somewhere in scripture and if not we maybe should visit these places even if the words reported made there are not in contradiction to scripture.

 

[jmisk]

Agree @Tis_Bearself,

I believe the church has and protects truth and the fullness of the faith.
So why don’t we speak with authority?
I mean we can’t all be Fulton Sheens but can we get some ruling on some of this stuff?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Well, you may not be able to “see” it, but that’s how it works.

In order for a bishop to approve an apparition, he would need to conduct an investigation. Some dioceses simply don’t want to bother with this; it costs money and resources, and the bishop may have other priorities, like simply providing the sacraments to his flock with a limited number of priests, or balancing the budget, or something else. An investigation also might be difficult or impractical, for example if the alleged seer passes away before the bishops bother with investigating. Even when an investigation is conducted, there might not be enough conclusive evidence to say something supernatural definitely occurred.

But if the seer’s messages are encouraging people to pray and become closer to Jesus, then the bishop might think it’s good to promote the devotion, even if he doesn’t feel he can investigate or say for sure that Mary definitely appeared under the pine tree in the park on date X.

There are other cases where the bishop doesn’t want to approve the apparition because the seer has a questionable character or claimed a whole bunch of additional apparitions where the first ones look perhaps authentic and the later ones not so much. For example, Our Lady of Revelation had a seer who had a very questionable past and had left the Catholic Church for the Seventh Day Adventists. He claimed that Our Lady appeared to him when he was on the verge of killing the Pope and that she stopped him from doing this. While there are a lot of reasons to think Our Lady actually did appear (including the fact that she appeared in the same spot earlier to another totally different unrelated visionary and told her to convey the message to the Pope that someone was going to try to kill him, etc.) the bishops apparently don’t want to officially approve this apparition because of the character of the seer. But they allowed a big shrine to be built there, and Masses said there every day, and many people come and pray and it bears good fruit.

I also understand that in cases of interior locutions rather than an apparition, then no investigation will be done. In that case, the only possible approval is to have the messages of the locutions “approved for faith expression”. I reckon the Church figures there is no way to prove someone did or did not receive an interior locution, since it would be just Jesus or Mary sending a message to the person internally, rather than appearing in a visible way.

 

[commenter]

Public Revelation includes Scripture, Tradition, in conjunction with the Magisterium. Everything we need for salvation can be known from there.

Some Private Revelations have been evaluated by the Church, and found compatible with Public Revelation. They add no additional truths.

Think of them as similar to music at Mass. For one person, they offer encouragement to live out the truths found in the Gospel passage. For another person, does not mean much.

Now, if the parish relies on music as the source of their theology, if the organist is so prominent that you remember her more than the Mass, that’s a problem.

Of course a great deal of music is questionable, like many private Revelations.

The OP seems fixated on an all or nothing view, that if the Church knows some things, there fore the Church should know all things. But why? I trust the scientific conclusions of qualified scientists on some matters, even though they admit they don’t know other things.

Protestant churches will also acknowledge there are some things known to be true, other things known to be false, and a third category, compatible with what is known…but not provable in itself.

 

[undead_rat]

A list of private predictions was published over four hundred years ago, and this list of predictions is relevant to our times. The list was composed by a Benedictine monk and approved for publication by the Church. History has validated the accuracy of the predictions, and in 1942 the great Pope Pius XII made a tacit endorsement of them.

CA pundits have discussed the predictions on CA blogs, but all comments that questioned their conclusions have been deleted. Furthermore, we are prohibited from discussing this list of predictions on CAF. It’s a strange world.

 

[commenter]

In order for a bishop to approve an apparition, he would need to conduct an investigation. Some dioceses simply don’t want to bother with this; it costs money and resources, and the bishop may have other priorities, "

True. His priorities should be based on current pastoral need.

 

[jmisk]

@commenter

I do not think that if the Church knows some things they must know all things.
If the domain of the Church is to teach and protect truths of the faith, I will listen and abide.

My question specifically deals with the approval of devotions to events they neither confirm nor deny.

If they confirm, that should have implications as far as our understanding of Mary
If they deny the experience happened then they shouldn’t allow the devotion. You shouldn’t promote the devotion to St. XYZ for healing Mr. Person’s cancer if Mr. Person never had cancer.

It seems that the only two conditions for the events being “approved” are if the witness or witnesses are believable/do not have questionable pasts or character and if devotions “bear fruit”.

Can God be limited to those with only perfect backgrounds or show a great miracle for the benefit of only gaining one soul?

What I’m not saying:
The Church should only approve the devotion if they know absolutely everything about the event down to the angle the sun was hitting Mary’s face.

What I am saying:
It seems from the comments previously mentioned that the Church does not really “approve” events but just affirms testimonies from witnesses to the event. To which I ask, if you believe Juan Diego saw Our Lady and she spoke to him and asked him, “¿No estoy yo aquí que soy tu madre?”, shouldn’t those words of Mary be collected and shared with all believers based on who said them (Our Lady) and how they support the church’s teaching regarding her being our spiritual mother?

How does the Church calculate:
“I believe their testimony”
+
“People’s faith is strengthened or new believers are coming to the faith due to the testimony”
+
“Though these words from Mary are new they do not fundamentally conflict with the faith”
=
Build a shrine, proclaim the devotion permissible, yet… we aren’t officially saying the event happened because Mary speaking English, Spanish or saying to pray for Russia(Fatima), though not technically outside the faith kinda maybe probably enlightened a few theological arguments theologians haven’t settled.

I guess my major hang up is the word permissible.
Permissible means it’s an available option.
It’s allowable.
It’s an option.

If we are able to pray to or have devotions to Our Lady of Lourdes, Fatima or any other approved apparition or holy site an affirmative statement should be made that these events did in fact occur.

I can’t have a devotion or shouldn’t have a devotion or be permitted to pray to Our Lady of Rhode Island if she’s never been there. If the approving Bishop says I can have a devotion to her my question is “If my bishop says I can pray to our Lady of Rhode Island then does he not believe that Mary (as reported by a seer) did in fact come to Rhode Island?” If he doesn’t think that happened then why permit me to pray to her.

This isn’t “compatible with what is known…but not provable in itself” this is the Bishop saying I am permitted the praying to a maybe. I don’t care if you can prove anything. The proof isn’t what’s bothering me, it’s the permission to pray without a Bishop saying yes or no.

 

[jmisk]

@undead_rat hahaha, well that’s not cool. I mean that’s like saying I picked the winning lotto numbers a decade ago but won’t tell you the numbers or which lottery it was for.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

If we are able to pray to or have devotions to Our Lady of Lourdes, Fatima or any other approved apparition or holy site an affirmative statement should be made that these events did in fact occur.

For an approved apparition, the bishop or the Vatican has indeed made some sort of affirmative statement that a supernatural appearance of Mary did occur, by approving it.

Your question pertains more to those apparitions that are only “approved for faith expression”. Lourdes, Fatima and Guadalupe do not fall in that category; they are Vatican approved.
Examples of apparitions that are “approved for faith expression” only would be Our Lady of Revelation, Our Lady of America, Our Lady of Pellevoisin, just to name a few.

 

[jmisk]

@Tis_Bearself

Awesome.

Thank you for the clarification and distinction.

I guess my follow up question would be for the Vatican Approved: Why isn’t this more of a big deal? Why don’t include the words of Mary as some form of imprtant church document “The Post Assumption sayings of the Mother of God” but in Latin of course with a foreword by Cardinal Sarah

 

[Tis_Bearself]

You don’t think stuff like the Popes making pilgrimages to places like Fatima are a big deal?

Pope JPII believed that Mary saved him from assassination and he put the bullet they removed from his body in Our Lady of Fatima’s crown.

As for the Vatican publishing the words of the approved apparitions, in most cases the words have already been published and distributed widely with nihil obstat and imprimatur and in some cases the apparition was silent (such as Knock, also Vatican-approved).

The major Vatican-approved apparitions also have their own feast days. December 12 for example is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I think the Church does quite a bit to promote at least some of the approved apparitions. Some are more popular than others. I always wonder why we rarely hear about Beauraing, Banneux, La Salette, and some others that the Vatican has approved. But there are shrines there and we are free to go and pray as much as we like.

 

[jmisk]

@Tis_Bearself

Doesn’t the approval of these apparitions bring about further understanding of some theological questions?

I mean Mary apparently can speak in many languages. Many that did not exist when she was alive, so doesn’t that shed some new information that scripture doesn’t necessarily say explicitly. I mean we have the events of Pentecost where everyone could understand each other but I don’t believe we have any event in scripture where saints in heaven talk to humans on earth in languages that saint wouldn’t be thought to know (Mary/Spanish).

I mean our Protestant brothers and sisters might grant that there are saints in heaven but argue that they cannot hear our prayers to communicate to us. Wouldn’t we turn to this apparitions as events that confirm our views about what saint are capable of? I mean Lourdes confirmed the title of immaculate conception already declared by the church but doesn’t Mary saying it about herself make it a very big deal and an event we should lean on when scripture may imply that attribute only?