Itinéraires n° 181 (March 1974), pp. 177-187
By Roger
Thomas CALMEL, O.P.
I
call "revelationism" an inordinate reliance on private
revelations; a reliance that is not sufficiently enlightened and corrected by
reason and faith. Experience shows that Christians afflicted with either
"apparitionism" or "revelationism" are difficult people to
cure. I would at least hope that their illness is not too contagious,
which is why I am writing this note.
To be sure,
I do not reproach these brothers in the faith for believing in the marvelous of
a private order, nor for its indispensable role in the Church, but rather for
practically placing it above Scripture and Tradition; furthermore, for equating
the most diverse marvelous events; and finally, for allowing their inner life
to be thrown off track by the marvelous, instead of placing it under the domain
of the theological virtues, which are the true center of all life in Christ.
Thus, one
finds certain Christians who grant exactly the same credit to childish and
bizarre revelations, supposedly received by privileged souls, as they do to the
messages of Lourdes, which are so limpid, so sober, and so consonant with
Catholic dogma. And what can be said of those Christians who, relying on
the visions of these famous privileged souls, know much more about the Passion
of our Lord than the evangelists themselves. An author not long ago
overwhelmed us with devotional tracts about the secret sorrows of Our
Lord. These tracts indicate a troubled, unhealthy, and, frankly, unhinged
imagination in the visionary, who, moreover, is impossible to identify.
Yet, the
same author is now beginning to distribute a copious compilation that is
presented to us alternately as an "encyclopedia of Christian
prophetism" and as "the book of the century". "Hurry,"
says the six-page advertising flyer, "hurry to order it from
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France." Hurry all the more because it is five
minutes to midnight. It is Five Minutes to Midnight—such is the
title of the prophetic and encyclopedic work that announces to us that
"Paris will soon burn like Sodom and Gomorrah, that three days of darkness
will end the announced calamities, and that, after catastrophes of all
kinds, only a quarter of humanity will remain, and perhaps even less".
These
punishments are by no means impossible, but one would like prophets or
prophetesses to produce sufficient credentials to grant them credence. To
accredit their own message, saints as eminent as Joan or Bernadette did not
dispense themselves from doing so. Furthermore, is it quite appropriate to
mix commercial interests and religious sentiment in a prospectus; to appeal to
the fear of God while simultaneously deploying the tricks of advertising, for
you are told flat out that this book is "the book of the century... one
needs to have it on hand at all times... it exerts a calming influence on the
reader"? All of this does not seem very serious.
But
combating the merchants of revelations hardly attracts me. Discarding
spoiled food is not enough to nourish souls. Let us rather seek the
life-giving nourishment of the Divine Scriptures. And since the
revelationists speak to us so much about the Lord's judgments on human history,
let us recall the teachings of Revelation as reported to us by the inspired
texts. Let us also recall, on the same subject, the solid doctrine of the
Fathers and Doctors. We believe in the return of the Lord: "Credo...
in unum Dominum Jesum Christum... et iterum, venturus est cum gloria judicare
vivos et mortuos, cujus regni non erit finis."
However, we are not fixated on the day and the hour, for it is not within the Lord's mission to make them known to us (Matt. xxiv, 36). We know that not only will there come, at the end, a supreme antichrist, but also that, throughout the course of history, there will be prefigurations of the antichrist. Not only will there be the final general apostasy predicted in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians (II Thess. ii, 3-12), but beforehand, we will experience prefigurations of the apostasy. Not only at the very end of ends will faith be almost extinguished and charity alive only among a small number—so much will coldness and selfishness have spread death into the souls of men; not only, therefore, at the end of history will humanity be almost entirely without faith and without love, but there will also be, during the course of history, prefigurations of this darkening and this sort of extinction of spiritual life. We, Christians, have always known, in particular the apostle Saint John and since Saint Augustine, that a final antichrist would come but that he had precursors since apostolic times (I Jn. ii, 18). We know that the Apocalypse is not an anticipated chronology but a theology of history in the form of symbols that repeat, recapitulate, and mutually clarify one another. We know that chapter xxiv of Saint Matthew, and chapters xvii (latter part) and xxi of Saint Luke do not concern exclusively two generations: the generation contemporary with the first coming of the Lord, which saw the ruin of the temple, and the final generation, which will see the glorious return of Jesus Christ; but these chapters are also addressed, in many respects, to the generations situated between the two. The Lord deemed worthy of His infallible teaching, regarding the judgments He passes on the unfolding of history, the numerous intermediate generations which were to be, by far, those that would count the most faithful, those that would form the most important part of His Church.
There is
one sign of the end that will have no prior repetition: that is the conversion
of the Jewish people as a people. But as for this very sign, no one is in
a position to say exactly where it should be placed before the end of the
world. For the other signs—apostasy, antichrist, expansion of the Gospel,
spiritual death, wars, and cataclysms—we know that even if they develop
according to a sort of linear progress, they also proceed by cyclical
repetitions. Toward which of these repetitions we are marching, God only
knows.
Therefore,
to the intermediate generations between the one that witnessed the ruin of
Jerusalem and the one that will see the end of the world, the Lord gave a
double revelation: at the same time that He announced the overflows of iniquity
and prodigious punishments, He guaranteed us the permanence of the sources of
courage and consolation. Whatever the historical refinements of iniquity
may be, these days of trial, however dangerous they may be, will be shortened
for the sake of the elect (Matt. xxiv, 22); secondly, no one will be able to
snatch the sheep from the hand of the Good Shepherd (Jn. x, 28-29); thirdly,
Redemption will never cease to be near, and we must lift up our heads, levate
capita vestra (Lk. xxi, 28), toward Him whose Heart is open for us
(Jn. xix, 37); fourthly, the Holy Spirit will not cease to bear witness to
Christ (Jn. xvi, 1-15), even when the apostasy seems to submerge everything.
To sum it
all up, the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church (Matt. xvi, 18),
against Peter, and against the faith; against the Mass (1) and against the
sacraments, even when the man of lawlessness sits in the holy place (II Thess.
ii, 4 and Matt. xxiv, 15). There is, therefore, a double revelation
regarding divine judgments and punishments. These contrasting aspects must
not be isolated and separated. When private revelations concern the
interventions of divine justice, they must fit faithfully into this perspective
of canonical revelation.
Yet, this
is not what is found in the various publications of the
revelationists. These writings have just what is needed to panic and
terrorize souls. Not only do they claim to pinpoint the day and the hour
of where we stand in the preparations and prefigurations of the end—which
already shows no lack of audacity —but in their simplistic eagerness to
predict the day and the hour, they accustom those who listen to them to live in
the irrational, preferring unverified rumors over the light of common sense and
wisely conducted reflection. They have no true, realistic concern for
specifying the remedies that it is always in our power to apply, whatever state
we may be in regarding the repetition of the end.
Furthermore,
they are much more preoccupied with curiously seeking what span of time
separates us from the end than with strengthening themselves in faith—faith in
the grace of redemption, which is always sufficient regardless of the
remoteness or proximity of the Parousia. "It is five minutes to
midnight," the manufacturers of prophetic encyclopedias tell
us ; but they will not know how to tell us this: whether it is five
minutes to midnight or half past ten, it is, in any case, the hour to do what
lies within us to attend a good Mass with the proper dispositions ; it is
the hour to meditate upon and recite the Rosary ; it is the hour to serve
our neighbor without complicity in their weaknesses and without irritation at
their miseries ; it is the hour to make exceptional sacrifices to preserve
children from corruption and to ensure the existence of true Christian
schools ; it is the hour, finally, for clerics to live even more according
to the dignity of their state and to deepen their ecclesiastical sciences,
instead of wasting their time deciphering the nonsense with which the
indiscreet publicity of apparitionists of every stripe submerges us.
We
obviously do not reject private prophecies on the pretext that they announce
divine punishments: plague and fire, war and famine, and catastrophes of all
kinds. We reject them all the less under such a pretext because fearsome
predictions are an integral part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our
merciful Savior gave Himself as king and as judge ; judge not only at the
end of the world, but also judge over the course of history. Ipsius
sunt tempora et sæcula (2). The predictions about the ruin of
Jerusalem, the terrible end of the world, and the persecutions of Christians
cannot be removed from the Gospels and the Epistles. On several occasions,
Jesus spoke as a prophet of doom. But He is a prophet of doom within a
Gospel climate, and that is what changes everything, making His prophecy a
nourishment for living by divine grace, a source of inner peace and
beatitude. Beati qui lugent quoniam ipsi consolabuntur (3).
Thus, we
will take care not to despise private prophecies when they are prophecies of
doom, and precisely for that reason ; but we demand two things: first,
sufficient credentials to accept that the messenger or visionary speaks to us
from God, in God's name, and not from their own making ; which presupposes
this second condition, that their prophecy aligns with that path of peace,
conversion, and supernatural equilibrium which is the path of the Gospel. In
a word, that private prophecies, even comminatory ones, maintain themselves at
that level of elevation, sobriety, and purity which belongs to the Gospel.
The Great
Monarch and the Great Pope: this is one of the chapters of the famous
encyclopedia. That is all very fine, but in any case, if the Lord, in His
mercy, wishes once again to give France a leader who is wise and holy, docile
to the See of Peter but free from papism—if the Lord deigns to grant our
country this quite extraordinary mercy—well, a preparation is
indispensable. Yet this preparation will not happen if too many Christians
allow themselves to be carried away by the epidemic of revelationism.
It can be
good to sometimes recall "the prophecy of Saint Pius X" (4):
"What
shall I say now to you, sons of France, who groan under the weight of
persecution? The people that made an alliance with God at the baptismal
fonts of Reims will repent and return to its first vocation... Faults will not
go unpunished, but she will never perish, the daughter of so many merits, so
many sighs, and so many tears. A day will come, and we hope it is not far
off, when France, like Saul on the road to Damascus, will be enveloped in a
heavenly light and will hear a Voice repeating to her: 'My daughter, why do you
persecute Me?' And upon her reply: 'Who are You, Lord?' the Voice will
answer: 'I am Jesus whom you persecute. It is hard for you to kick against
the goad, because, in your obstinacy, you ruin yourself.' And she,
trembling and astonished, will say: 'Lord, what do You want me to do?' And
He: 'Arise, wash away the stains that have disfigured you, awaken in your bosom
the dormant sentiments and the pact of our alliance, and go, eldest Daughter of
the Church, predestined nation, vessel of election, go carry as in the past My
name before all the peoples and all the kings of the earth.'"
The recall
of such a prophecy can be useful. Still, it would need to be done with
logic and honesty, for it is as dishonest as it is illogical to hold out hope
for God's mercy regarding the future of the nation while failing to do the
little that lies within us in the present hour.
The present
hour is one where, the celebration of the Mass being terribly threatened, it is
all the more necessary to maintain it, and thus to say it and attend it with
the required dispositions. It is the hour when, the true catechism being
difficult to ensure, there is all the more reason to get to work on it. It
is the hour when family legislation (if one can call it that) is becoming
criminal and monstrous; we must therefore fight it with all our
strength. It is the hour when the innovations of Paul VI are struck with
the most legitimate suspicion, as proven by the overwhelming list compiled by
the Libellus of Abbé de Nantes ; let us therefore have
the courage to see that, by the novelties of that particular pontiff, we are
not bound. It is the hour when bishops, molded and maneuvered by
collegiality, attempt to enforce a religious syncretism that is simultaneously
Masonic, Communist, and Christian ; we do not have to follow such
bishops. It is the hour, finally, when we must bear witness to the faith
of all time with dispositions of fortitude and humility that must be constantly
renewed, for our witness is not in the face of a violent persecution—which
would accelerate and simplify many things—but in the face of a Modernist
revolution inspired by the demons of the worst entanglements.
Such is the
present hour. Yet this diagnosis, incomplete though it may be, is not the
one we find in the confused and irrational chatter of the revelationists ;
it is the diagnosis we make by using the reason God has given us, illuminated
by the lights of faith and theological reflection. It is therefore in the
present hour, such as it is, that we must sanctify ourselves and bear
witness ; and all the more so since we ask God that, for the years to
come, the prophecy of Saint Pius X may be realized in some way. The
current period, as much as and more than previous periods, requires of the
Christian a spiritual attitude of lucidity, realism, faith, charity, and
hope. Yet it is not these reasonable and theological attitudes that the
producers and retailers of revelationist papers foster in souls of good will.
The
revelationists dun our ears with nebulous, feverish, sentimental messages, but
they do not truly attach themselves to the messages of holiness from the most
authoritative mystics: the author of the Imitation, Saint John of
the Cross, the little Thérèse... Of private prophecy within the Church,
they seem to know only one aspect: the announcement of divine
punishments. Yet there are other aspects—not opposed to the first,
undoubtedly, but far superior: these are charisms of a doctrinal order, such as
the teaching of wisdom, the sermo scientiæ, which is granted to
some great saints for the edification of souls. This sermo
sapientiæ is not, properly speaking, a charism granted to
women (5); one must say, however, that a message like that of the little
Thérèse's way of childhood derives from a true charism. It restricts far
too much the favors that the Spirit of Christ grants to the Church to see
charisms only in the comminatory messages given in apparitions, even if the
message is orthodox and the seer worthy of credit.
One of the
gravest flaws of the revelationists is this: they have not seriously meditated
on the life and death of the saints who were most deeply engaged in private
prophecy, apparitions, the marvelous, and miracles: a Joan of Arc, a Margaret
Mary, a Catherine Labouré, a Bernadette, the children of Fatima. In the
life and death of these authentic privileged souls, there was nothing, but what
was simple, calm, and limpid; neither panic nor exaltation. Their message
was the least twisted imaginable, the least complicated. For this message
they were ready to give their lives, and indeed, Saint Joan of Arc was a
martyr. However, it was not in the isolated and, as it were, exorbitant
marvelous that Joan and the others had situated and fixed their souls; it was
like all Christians, like all saints, in faith, hope, and charity.
They held
to their message only because it formed part of the exceptional duty that God
commanded them to fulfill, just as He commands an ordinary
duty to most people; an ordinary duty that must be fulfilled with perfect
love. These messengers held to their message solely because this primary
fidelity was for them the condition for living the theological virtues and the
gifts of the Holy Spirit; therein lay the soul of their spiritual life. Their
life is no more conceivable without the intervention of the marvelous than
without fidelity to bearing witness to this marvelous, but the soul of their
life is charity, not the marvelous. The marvelous—revelations and prophecies—of
which they were the faithful messengers, is indispensable to the existence and
holiness of the Church, and to the conversion and survival of
France. The mystical body cannot do without graces gratis datae here
below. But it is grace gratum faciens—the grace of virtues and
gifts—which is its living soul.
Joan,
Margaret Mary, Catherine Labouré, Bernadette, the children of Fatima—these
messengers of the most exceptional marvelous—never ceased, while communicating
and defending their message, to strengthen themselves in sanctifying grace, in
the most humble and realistic love. One understands then how their
message, not only by the equilibrium of its content but by the manner of its
transmission, was not panicking but pacifying, both for their neighbor and for
themselves.
The Church
does not reject, cannot reject, the marvelous, revelations, and miracles; but
the Church places theological life and holiness above them, without
comparison. Faithful to this doctrine, taking great care not to dismiss on
principle the manifestations of the marvelous, but without being foolishly
credulous or vainly panicked, having put private revelations that deserve trust
(notably private revelations of universal scope) in their proper place, we will
use them to the best advantage in the light of faith—faith which is active
through charity (Gal. v, 6).
To live
uprightly in the Church, it is not enough for the Christian to say to himself:
the teaching of the hierarchical magisterium is sufficient; if there is
anything else, I do not want to know about it. For the magisterium itself
is obliged to know that there is something else; not indeed another teaching
than that of which the hierarchy has the deposit and vigilant custody, but
other miraculous voices of faithful messengers, who have the mission to speak
in order to draw attention to this very teaching dispensed by the magisterium. There
is no other magisterium than that of the hierarchy—an inspired magisterium that
would be superior to it and before which the first would have to lower its flag;
but there are other messengers than those of the hierarchy—inspired, miraculous
messengers whom the hierarchical dignitaries must accept to hear, even though
it belongs to the hierarchy to conclude and decide. The Catholic notion of
the Church certainly does not exclude charisms (6), but it subordinates them to
the hierarchy. It does not exclude private revelations; it merely demands
that they not be private illusions, and furthermore, that these revelations be
in agreement with Revelation.
At no time
in the history of the Church has the voice of the true hierarchy—not the
insinuations of the Modernist hierarchy, thus at no time has the true
hierarchy, guaranteed in an ordinary and official capacity by the charism of
truth (Saint Irenaeus)—pretended to stifle inspired and miraculous voices. For
these voices, if they come from God, far from contradicting Revelation,
repeat it, make it understood, persuading hearts with a more penetrating accent
and, as it were, in a tone more suited to new situations.
Thus, the
words of the hierarchical magisterium on the Sacred Heart of Jesus were not
changed by the private revelations of Saint Margaret Mary, but, after those
revelations, the same words were spoken with more vehemence and echoed with
greater enthusiasm. In 1854, the great voice of the Roman Pontiff had
resounded in the infallible definition of the Immaculate Conception, but this
voice only set the crowds in motion and mobilized nations for prayer and
penance following the appearances of the Immaculate to Saint Bernadette. One
could make similar observations regarding devotion to the Rosary and
consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary: without the inspired voice of the
seers of Fatima, the voice of the ordinary magisterium would not have imposed
itself so deeply upon Christian souls.
And what
can be said of comminatory private revelations? The warnings of the
twenty-fourth chapter of Saint Matthew are always there, and the Church always
makes them heard on the last Sunday after Pentecost; only a liturgy of
Modernist inspiration and fabrication attempts to make them
forgotten. Therefore, the Church always causes the oracles of the
twenty-fourth chapter of Saint Matthew to resound in the ears of the
faithful ; but for these warnings to be taken seriously by so many modern
Christians who turn in circles in their sins—with a daze as thick as that of
Noah's contemporaries on the very eve of the deluge—to awaken the sleepers, it
is necessary that, according to historical circumstances, the teaching of the
hierarchical magisterium on divine judgments be not modified, not bent in a
millenarian direction, but faithfully echoed by messengers charged with
transmitting comminatory revelations.
We only ask
of these messengers that they present themselves with sufficient guarantees,
just as we expect of the message that it be consonant with the Gospel.
All this is
to say that private revelations and, generally speaking, all charisms have a
place in the life of the Church—a role that is not negligible, not
supererogatory, but necessary. They must therefore be put in their proper
place: subordinating them to the authority of the true magisterium (entirely
different from the false Modernist magisterium), placing them within the line
of divine Revelation, and letting ourselves be awakened, touched, converted,
and edified by the miraculous accent with which they repeat to us the words of
eternal life.
Footnotes:
(1) On this specific subject (permanence of the Mass), see Malvenda, O.P., in the Dissertation on the Antichrist, no. 22, which follows the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians in the Bible de Vence, Vol. 16, Paris 1773. The so-called Bible de Vence adapts and completes the Bible of Dom Calmet.
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