Do Visionaries Have Authority
Inteview with Fr. Daniel Moloney Part 3
This is part 3 of my interview with Fr. Daniel Moloney. Today: how do we deal with the words of visionaries.
I was fascinated by your description of how visionaries’ visions are basically filtered through their own experiences. For example, you wrote that St. Faustina’s writings have tremendous value, but they do not have authority.
So it’s fascinating because you’ll hear: “Well, this is what’s St. Faustina says” regarding her visions and of course it’s personal revelation. It’s interesting that this is what she said, but that doesn’t mean this is the same thing as what the Catholic catechism says on the exact same subject, so to speak I don’t know if that was a good example, but . . .
That’s right. Yeah, Pope Benedict when he was Cardinal Ratzinger and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was asked to give a theological commentary on the third Secret of Fatima when it was published.
And he was sort of thinking about this. He said you look that these secrets were given to children.They weren’t able to know what was going on.
These children had no idea what’s going on in Russia in 1917, right? They had no idea about world politics. They were farmers’ children who were little kids. So what they were shown was richer than they could understand which is why we pay attention. We have a richness that was given to them.
Same thing with Saint Bernadette, right? It was when she says “the lady I have been seeing tells me: ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’ ”
Bernadette had a real difficulty understanding the catechism to be able to receive her first communion. No one who knew her would believe that she had merest inkling of what the Immaculate Conception was.
Everyone’s like: ‘Oh she must be really seeing Mary.’ ‘This couldn’t be from her imagination.’ So that was something that Pope Benedict is reflecting on.
What they’re telling us is richer than they know but it’s also that their ability to express it as limited by their own concepts and vocabulary and such. He compares it to what is sometimes called private revelation. He says it’s what in the Old Testament we call prophecy. And when Saint Paul says that the Holy Spirit comes among the people in Corinth and they have prophecy as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This would be one example that these visions are given to people as prophecy and just as the Old Testament prophets didn’t realize sometimes that what they were prophesying had to do with Jesus.
The visions that are being given people are going to be and can be richer than what they themselves understand and comprehend.
So we don’t necessarily see them as understanding this is what Mary said, therefore, that’s the law.
Correct. And that’s because of course of the fullness of revelation comes from the Word of God incarnate. You can’t do better than Jesus himself. And so the fullness of revelation comes down with Jesus himself. When he gives the Holy Spirit to the Apostles at Pentecost the Holy Spirit acting through the apostles and that founding generation is the fullness of Revelation.
Everything else is pointing us towards this or that aspect of the first generation’s particular spiritual good deposit.
So the children at Fatima are saying you know, let’s pray for those most in need of God’s mercies; that they be saved from the fires of hell, right? Right after that is St. Faustina, you know getting these revelations day after day year after year regarding mercy, I think part of it is that the 20th century was when we forgot about what mercy really wants.
Fr. Daniel Moloney’s Book: Mercy, What Every Catholic Should Know is available through Ignatius Press