Authentic apparitions can lead us closer to Christ and his Church. False ones may offer comfort, but often at the cost of unity and obedience.
During the 1990s, I visited two sites where apparitions of the Blessed Mother were alleged but eventually faded after predictions failed to materialize, without requiring Church intervention.
Call me naïve, but I was also faith-filled, believing such things were possible just as pilgrims and doubters alike did when they witnessed the sun dance in the sky in Fatima on Oct. 13, 1917. No one waited for an investigation to see whether the prediction of a “great sign” would really take place.
Eventually, I began looking at false apparitions, wondering what the devil gets out of them. The answer soon became clear: Rejection of Church authority and disobedience. That is his endgame.
Necedah’s Condemned Shrine
One example was apparent when I pulled into a site in Necedah, Wisconsin, attracted by a roadside billboard advertising a Marian shrine. The ghost-town-like aura gave me creepy vibes. I later learned the Church had long since condemned the site.
There were numerous life-sized statues of saints and biblical scenes put up during a short-lived zeal for messages Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to receive beginning Nov. 12, 1949. In the fall of 1950, her claims of apparitions were such big news that 50,000 people converged there. The front page of the Wisconsin State Journal quoted Van Hoof: “This is the battle for peace for all of you. Prayer, my dear children, will bring you peace.”
Father Victor Fortino, from Watervliet, Michigan, attended that day, but in a letter dated Oct. 27, 1950, he advised people to wait for Catholic authorities to investigate. He warned, “Satan has appeared to saints and sinners alike posing as the Blessed Mother and as the Crucified Christ, so it is crucial that the Church rule on the Van Hoof apparitions.”
By June 1955, Bishop John Treacy of the Diocese of Lacrosse officially rejected Van Hoof’s visions as false and prohibited all public and private religious worship connected with them. The bishop told the Van Hoof family to remove the religious artifacts from their farm and stop promoting claims of apparitions. The investigation found the reported visions to be indisputably false. Van Hoof and her followers refused to comply. They left the Catholic Church and joined a breakaway movement.
Necedah is but one example among others in the U.S. of still active sites where people have ignored the Church’s ruling in favor of following a false visionary.
Obedience or Defection?
We are free to pray at an alleged apparition site but once the Church declares it “Constat de non supernaturalitate” — a former statement that an alleged apparition has been determined to be not of supernatural origin — and declares it off limits to clergy and laity, it becomes a matter of obeying Catholic authority or thinking we know better.
Crowds of visitors and reported spiritual experiences do not constitute proof. I once read a good explanation, that when everything is just alleged and people come in faith, they bring their own holiness to these sites. They pray and love God. God answers prayers. All this is holy, but it’s not proof of the authenticity of purported apparitions.
Too often, after apparitions are condemned, people feel betrayed and give up on God. Or disappointment leads them to reject Church authority, convinced that they’re right and the Church is wrong. By offering their disappointment to God and continuing to walk with him, they acknowledge that his Church is bigger than the claims of any purported visionary.
The Devil’s Lure
In the article “How to Tell True Apparitions From False,” I wrote that authentic apparitions and private revelations are for our spiritual well-being, while false ones can lead us astray. In his classic book on Catholic mysticism, The Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mystical Prayer, Father Auguste Poulain examined authentic mystical experiences that guide souls to union with God, as distinguished from those that are imagination, fantasy or diabolical illusion. He pointed out that no one is required to believe in apparitions — even if the Church approves them.
According to Poulain, the devil can use false apparitions to ensnare otherwise serious Catholics.
“False visions usually begin with great promise. But once convinced, followers imperceptibly veer off little by little and often rebel against Church authority if there is a negative ruling.”
He also pointed out other red flags: lack of humility which includes rejecting Church authority, unfulfilled predictions or changing ones, responding to criticism and doubts with irritation, and frivolousness of claiming answers to insignificant curiosities.
Even if 99% of the messages conform to Catholic teaching, it is the 1% that does harm. The devil cannot mislead devout Catholics with outright heresy, but he can subtly plant errors within false messages. It is far safer to stick with apparitions approved by the Church than to go it alone and risk being duped by the devil.
Michael O’Neil created the website MiracleHunter.com and has cataloged hundreds of reported Marian apparitions dating back to 1900 to find out which apparitions are worthy of belief and which ones should be avoided. Most have either not been investigated or received no official ruling, but some were given negative decisions and some have been approved.
The local bishop is the initial authority in cases of private revelation. Canon 753 authorizes him to instruct the faithful, who “are bound to adhere with religious submission of mind to the authentic magisterium of their bishops.” The bishop may also appoint a committee to investigate further.
When an alleged visionary disobeys a legitimate order from the bishop and claims that God is backing the action, it is a sure sign the origin is not divine. No approved message or saint has ever followed that course.