Diabolical Influence Around Authentic Apparitions

 

 I have frequently wrote against those I label "Apparitionists:" They are people who exalt private revelations and apparitions whether approved by the Church (such as Our Lady of Fatima) or not (such as Our Lady of the Roses) over the teaching of the Church. They obsess over the alleged "true meanings" of messages (as if salvation depended on them), or even accept them to the exclusion of authentic Church doctrines in some area(s). 

Personally, I don't think Traditionalists should concern themselves over private revelations. To make the terminology clear, "private revelation" has nothing to do with the number of persons that claim to have seen and/or experienced something. "Public Revelation" refers to the Divine Deposit of Revelation given to the Church for all human beings to believe, so that they may be saved. Public Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, St. John, in 100 AD. Private revelation refers to all communication by God (directly or indirectly) with humans after Public Revelation ended. I can't stress strongly enough that no private revelation, including those deemed "worthy of belief" by the Church, need to be accepted by Catholics. You can reject any or all Church-approved apparitions and you would not be a heretic, nor would you commit a sin.

This does not mean that private revelations are "useless." Obviously, if the Church approves something as worthy of belief, we can believe it without fear of sinning against faith or morals. God communicates to us for a reason. However, I refuse to get drawn into arguments over what a particular apparition or a particular revelation "really means." Moreover, it is by studying the approved theologians that we can learn the One True Faith and make our Catholic way the best we can through these most difficult times.

To be certain, I believe in approved apparitions without making them the focus point of faith. I have devotion to Our Lady of Hope and Our Lady of Fatima. I wear the Five-fold Scapular, pray the Rosary daily, insert the "Fatima Prayer" at the end of each Rosary decade, and try to attend Mass every First Saturday of the month. These are great Catholic devotions all Traditionalists should try to maintain. I do not view "Consecrating Russia" as some panacea to the Great Apostasy. Nor will I quibble over specific declarations Our Lady is supposed to have said.

There are other dangers involved with even approved apparitions. Satan will do all he can to stymie the genuine good that comes from authentic apparitions. This post will focus on the false apparitions which followed two of the true apparitions. Let this serve as a warning to all against trying to find "true meanings" of apparitions with no Magisterial guide in this time of Great Apostasy.

Causes of False Apparitions

(The following information is condensed from theologians Farges, Mystical Phenomena, [1926], and theologian Poulain, The Grace of Interior Prayer, [1901], which had the approbation of no one less than Pope St. Pius X---Introibo). 

There are five principle causes for individuals having false apparitions and visions. It should be noted that among adults visions and apparitions are always very rare, and therefore must always seem suspect and attributable to illusion or Satan, unless there is strong proof to the contrary. Mostly Mary and/or her Divine Son appear to innocent children.  Adults must be of extraordinary holiness as was the case with Our Lord appearing with His Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. 

Thus we must conclude that genuine apparitions or visions are extremely rare. This is further proven by the fact that of the countless millions of reported apparitions of Mary, there are only only seventeen (17) apparitions of Mary that have explicit or implicit Church approval. Below are the five principle causes for false apparitions (something real and external to the one who sees it) and visions (wherein God produces a concept or image without there necessarily being anything external to the viewer). 

1. Hallucinations.

With the more “exterior” Marian apparitions it seems that the main dangers are illusion and hallucination. It would be a case of illusion if the visionary thought that a physical object was acting in an apparition-like manner, as in the case of those who think they have seen statues of Mary moving.

Hallucinations can thus be reckoned as pathological occurrences in which an inward image is falsely projected by the mind but regarded as real. Normally the senses receive outward stimulations and pass these to the brain where they are processed. But in certain abnormal and morbid states this process is reversed and images arising in the brain, for whatever reason, are projected outwardly and perceived by the individual as real objects.

Thus people suffering from hallucinations can believe they are seeing things which are not real, or hearing imaginary voices, and so on. It is something like the difference between a camera and a slide projector. The camera captures an image on the film, through its lens, of an external object, whereas the slide projector outwardly projects an image from the photographic slide onto a screen.

Thus hallucinations and normal vision are complete opposites. This explains how hypnotists are able to deceive their subjects into believing that they are really seeing imaginary objects. They are able to influence the imagination such that it produces images, sounds, smells, etc., which are felt to be real by the subject. This also indicates that hallucinations can be governed by the will, either that of the individual, or someone else, such as a hypnotist.

And if the wills of individuals can be influenced by other people to produce hallucinatory states then that principle also extends to the devil. However, it always needs to be borne in mind that hallucinations can also be produced artificially by drugs, excessive emotional excitement, and mental illness. These are more likely causes than direct diabolical influence, and the Church cautions us against assuming the demonic until all natural causes are ruled out. 

2.  Illusory memories.

This is a psychological phenomenon whereby an individual recalls an event that never happened, or an actual occurrence substantially differently from the way it transpired. People with a history of trauma, or depression, are at risk for producing false memories when they are exposed to information that is related to their knowledge base.

3. Charlatans. 

False claims of apparitions and visions have been inspired by motives of political or pecuniary interest, or by the desire to mystify the public by evil persons. (Such can be seen in the phony visions of the Palmar de Troya cult---Introibo). 

4. Overactive Imaginations--even in true seers. 

This occurs in otherwise psychologically sound people who sometimes mingle their own action with the divine revelation. However, when the temperament is badly balanced or overexcited, they may do still more: they construct an altogether false revelation. Thanks to their feverish imaginations, such persons, during the most ordinary prayer, can pronounce interior words with such distinctness that they seem to be said by someone else. This can occur with those who had a bona fide vision/apparition, or those who never had such. 

5. Diabolic origin.

Satan has the power to cause false apparitions and visions. That is why recourse to the Magisterium must always be had.

False Seers at Lourdes

(The information below comes from Fr. Rene Laurentin and his voluminous works on Lourdes. Although he defected to the Vatican II sect, this work was in the 1950s---Introibo).

Our Lady of Lourdes is an approved apparition. However, a slew of other "visionaries" popped up along with St. Bernadette. All of this led to a great deal of confusion, causing some to believe in all these new “apparitions,” as well as St. Bernadette’s, while others rejected all talk of apparitions as nonsensical. It served Satan well. 

One "seer," Marie Bernard, claimed to have seen three persons in the grotto at Lourdes, an old man with a white beard, a young woman and a child. She said that the man held a bunch of keys in one hand and twirled his moustache with the other! This vision was repeated, but this time, according to Marie Bernard, the figures indulged in indecent gestures.

Obviously, all this was very unhealthy, and the way events were developing is apparent from a description of another visionary, the Mayor’s servant, Marie Courrech. She struck a contemporary as completely inferior to St. Bernadette in terms of deportment and manner, and in addition, was subject to sudden twitchings and convulsive movements. Often, when she saw her visions on the other side of the Gave, she would rush forward, explaining afterwards that the vision had been calling her to the grotto. If we had not restrained her with great difficulty, she would have thrown herself into the river.

Clearly, it would have suited the devil’s purposes very well if someone had been drowned at Lourdes while trying to reach an imagined or diabolical vision. The number of visionaries, both male and female, continued to grow, and their antics persisted until the beginning of 1859.  Many school children had claimed to see visions at the grotto, and witnesses described how they saw a girl of ten or eleven, shouting and screaming and claiming to have seen a vision. One young girl cried out that the “Lord” was going to recite a rosary, apparently oblivious to the fact that it was not possible that God would pray to Mary. On other occasions, visionaries claimed the power to bless rosaries.

False Seer at Beauraing

 Our Lady of  Beauraing was an authentic series of 33 apparitions to five children in Belgium between November 29, 1932 and January 3, 1933. The Blessed Virgin asked for sacrifice, prayer, and penance to convert sinners. The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office approved the apparitions in 1949. 

In June of 1933, a 58 year old man, one Tilman Come, claimed to have been cured of illness after seeing the Blessed Virgin at the hawthorn in the convent garden at Beauraing. He alleged that Mary had said she had come to protect Belgium from the invader, which people naturally applied to Hitler, and he announced another “apparition” for June 25th, when a crowd of 50,000 turned up.

Unfortunately, his apparition of "Mary" apparently can't spell, since Come stated that on asking her name, he saw this title in golden letters on her sash: Notre-Dame de Boring, or “Our Lady of Boring.” He would go into a sort of "trance" and on this occasion he claimed that the vision had told him to organize a great pilgrimage for the Feast of the Assumption. Although 200,000 people turned up, by now the focus had shifted to people wondering about Tilman Come instead of what "Mary said," and within a year, he faded from view as it was established that he was mentally ill and not really responsible for his actions.

So although his “visions” were false, he played a part in drawing large crowds to Beauraing for nothing, and they should be a salutary reminder to those who support modern adult “visionaries” who have claimed to see Mary, Jesus, angels or saints. When adults claim such things, unless they display evident signs of sanctity, it is highly likely that they are either deceived in some sense, unbalanced, or lying. (Source: Sharkey & Debergh, Our Lady of Beauraing, [1959]).     

Conclusion

The number of true apparitions and visions is few, but the number of "seers" and "visionaries" is numerous. There were false visions and seers, even around true apparitions. Read the approved theologians to learn the Faith. Don't try to find out what's "really going on in our times" according to the "true meaning" of some apparition or vision--even those approved by the Church.

Special Addendum: Movie Recommendation

Until now, the only movie to which I gave an unconditional recommendation to watch was Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. A couple of my friends told me to watch a movie, now streaming, entitled Nefarious. It is a horror movie, and most horror movies are full of the occult and/or graphic violence. I was informed this movie had Traditional Catholic theology throughout. Intrigued, when I finished my work late at night, I rented the movie through a movie channel. 

I started watching and couldn't turn my eyes away. Without giving too much away, the movie is 97 minutes in length, and it flies by. It stars Sean Patrick Flanery as a man convicted of multiple murders sitting on death row. He needs to be declared mentally competent by a psychiatrist for his scheduled execution to proceed that night. Dr. James Martin (played by Jordan Belfi) is the psychiatrist enlisted to decide his fate. The convict claims he is a demon called "Nefarious" and he made Eddie (the condemned man) commit those acts. Dr. Martin informs Nefarious that he is an atheist and will not fall for his acting crazy. 

At one point Dr. Martin calls in a Vatican II sect "priest" apparently wearing a scarf or stole that is sodomite rainbow colors. Nefarious becomes upset until the "priest" informs him that demonic possession isn't real, he's just a sick man. Nefarious is no longer afraid, calling the alleged priest a "poser" (i.e., someone who pretends to be something he is not). The film is unabashedly pro-life and theologically accurate. As Nefarious says, "I know more about theology than any human being that ever existed."  

Mimicking The Screwtape Letters, Nefarious refers to God as "The Enemy" and Satan as his "master below." When asked why the demons have not won against humanity, Nefarious says, "The Carpenter. We made the biggest mistake getting Him killed." Dr. Martin asks how Nefarious possessed Eddie. Nefarious then talks about Eddie's mother getting him a Ouija Board as one of the reasons he was possessed (indeed, the occult Ouija Board is an open door to demonic obsession and possession). 

The film openly attacks the atheist worldview and takes shots at "woke" ideology. There was a Vatican II sect exorcist on the set when the movie was filmed, and he claimed it accurately portrays diabolical possession. Near the end of the movie, there is an appearance by Glenn Beck, an apostate who is Mormon, but the film's theology remains Traditional Catholic (Beck was validly baptized a Catholic in 1964, and joined the Mormon sect in 1999). 

There were also eerie happenings during the filming. According to the Internet Movie Database (IMBD.com):

Some of the challenges of shooting [the movie] was when the federal government in Oklahoma almost shut down the project due to a strike though no grievances were expressed, electricity came down, the sound mixer died, nine car crashes occurred with the crew despite being under 100 drivers, [executive producer] Steve Deace became infected with a cyst under his arm, an on-set priest/exorcist suffered a life-threatening ruptured appendix, and the roof of one of the office buildings was ripped off in a storm. 

Seems like Hell wasn't happy with this production!

The movie has been derided as "Christian propaganda." All the more reason to go watch it--you won't be disappointed! WARNING! This movie has scenes of intense violence and the nature of demonic possession makes it extremely frightening. Viewer discretion advised. Not for those under age 21.