…or at least with some of the Catholics who think about her too much. Apparently the Catholic Church is facing a significant enough problem: Too many devotees are claiming to have visions of the Virgin Mary herself. Either Mary has been extremely busy lately or Catholics are having difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy.

Catholics ordered to keep quiet over Virgin visions

Catholics who claim they have seen the Virgin Mary will be forced to remain silent about the apparitions until a team of psychologists, theologians, priests and exorcists have fully investigated their claims under new Vatican guidelines aimed at stamping out false claims of miracles.

The Pope has instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition, to draw up a new handbook to help bishops snuff out an explosion of bogus heavenly apparitions.

Personally, I think that all heavenly apparitions are bogus – but this is a good start.

Benedict XVI plans to update the Vatican’s current rules on investigating apparitions to help distinguish between true and false claims of visions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, messages, stigmata (the appearances of the five wounds of Christ), weeping and bleeding statues and Eucharistic miracles.

Monsignor Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, a respected Spanish Jesuit archbishop, has been placed in charge of drawing up the handbook, known as a “vademecum”, which will update the current rules set in 1978.

How does one actually go about distinguishing between ‘true’ and ‘false’ miraculous visions? Well, here are what the current rules state:

Positive Criteria

1. moral certainty (the certainty required to act morally in a situation of doubt) or at least great probability as to the existence of a private revelation at the end of a serious investigation into the case
2. evaluation of the personal qualities of the person in question (mental balance, honesty, moral life, sincerity, obedience to Church authority, willingness to practice faith in the normal way, etc.)
3. evaluation of the content of the revelations themselves (that they do not disagree with faith and morals of the Church, freedom from theological errors)
4. the revelation results in healthy devotion and spiritual fruits in people’s lives (greater prayer, greater conversion of heart, works of charity that result, etc.)

Negative Criteria

1. glaring errors in regard to the facts
2. doctrinal errors attributed to God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or to the Holy Spirit in how they appear
3. any pursuit of financial gain in relation to the alleged event
4. gravely immoral acts committed by the person or those associated with the person at the time of the event
5. psychological disorders or tendencies on the part of the person or persons associated

All right. According to this criteria, if a person that sees an apparition is a good Catholic, reveals good Catholic dogma, and helps make others into good Catholics, then the apparition could be true. Gee, that doesn’t seem like such sound assurance! On the other hand, how about the negative criteria? Well, if a true apparition were to appear for the purpose of correcting the Catholic Church on a certain dogmatic or doctrinal issue the Church would have to reject it based on this criteria.

Of course. The bottom-line here is that apparitions are useful to the church – real or not – in so much as they help advance the Catholic faith. That is to say, if they are self-serving.

According to Petrus, an Italian online magazine which leans towards conservative elements in the Vatican, anyone who claims to have seen an apparition will only be believed as long as they remain silent and do not court publicity over their claims. If they refuse to obey, this will be taken as a sign that their claims are false.

The visionaries will then be visited by a team of psychiatrists, either atheists or Catholics, to certify their mental health while theologians will assess the content of any heavenly messages to see if they contravene Church teachings.

Either atheist or Catholic psychiatrists? Really? I suppose atheist psychiatrists would be far more credible than protestant ones!

The way I see it, those who seek publicity over their claims are smart. Those who do not are simply deluded.

If the visionary is considered credible they will ultimately be questioned by one or more demonologists and exorcists to exclude the possibility that Satan is hiding behind the apparitions in order to deceive the faithful.

Demonologists! I’d love to meet one of those. Exorcists! Clearly such people are useful for distinguishing between reality and fantasy.

Never mind that. Look at what this passage is implying: Satan has the power to create Christian apparitions and visions. Presumably, then, Jesus’ resurrection appearances as described in the gospels – or his famous appearance to Paul – could all have been a Satanic apparition with the purpose of deceiving Jews and Gentiles into believing in the false religion of Christianity. Now that would be brilliant.