A reader writes;

Unlike you, I’m not surprised at the reaction to the apparition at Medjugorje. I saw this before in Catholic Match forums. I’m with you as far as being a skeptic about those apparitions.

You write: “I don’t care about Medugorje unless and until the Church approves it.”

My question is (and I think this is a blog-able topic): “What if I don’t care about Medjugorje even if it is approved?”

One of the complaints I see from Protestants is that they don’t buy into all these private revelations. Of course, Catholics will point out that there is a difference between private and public revelations, and that private revelation is not binding on the faithful. Protestants typically respond, “well yeah, I’ve heard that, but this is not true as a practical matter.”

Case in point.
During a discussion with friends over private and public revelation, I pointed out that I was a skeptic of Fatima, relying on the point that it was not an apparition which I was required to believe in. I was then asked if I respected the Church’s opinion and judgment on a matter which the Church had approved. Well, yeah, I thought, but wasn’t it a private revelation NOT binding on the faithful?

I found this helpful quote from This Rock:

The Flemish theologian E. Dhanis, an eminent scholar in this field, states succinctly that ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation has three elements: the message contains nothing contrary to faith or morals; it is lawful to make it public; and the faithful are authorized to accept it with prudence.

Does it become imprudent to remain skeptical of an apparition after the Church has “authorized [the faithful] to accept it”? If it is imprudent, then as a practical matter, isn’t private revelation binding?

Interesting point. I’ve noted in the past that one of the curious things I discovered in becoming Catholic was that my deep Evangelical fear that Catholics thought Mary to be another god was baseless. The reality is that *some* Catholics think her another pope and have cobbled together a sort of ersatz system of magisterial navigation in which their favorite apparitions and legends about Mary’s oracular pronouncements about the future or certain superstitious practices carry far more weight in navigating life than, you know, the actual teaching of the Church. Such people are much more consumed with decoding the Third Secret of Fatima and fretting about What the Pope Needs to Do About Russia than they are in trying to understand the ordinary teaching of the Church. The moment Mary gets pitted against the ordinary teaching of the Church or proposed as a sort of superbishop is the moment enthusiasm for private revelation has taken a wrong turn.

Similarly, the moment an apparition (even an approved one and *emphatically* an unapproved one) starts becoming a litmus test for Truly True Catholic Faith, you got trouble right here in River City. So, for instance, I regard the approved apparitions at, say, Fatima as real supernatural events. I think Mary really did appear. I think the Miracle of the Sun actually occurred and that 70,000 eyewitnesses pretty much puts the boots on stupid materialist attempts to attribute it all to mass hallucination, conspiracy, weather balloons, or whatever the current lame naturalistic explanation is.

But I don’t particularly have a devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. I’m happy for those who do. But I don’t. My devotional energies tend to go in other directions and I find other things more helpful to my life of prayer and obedience. The Church’s attitude to all this appears to be “de gustibus”. Works for me. And since the message of our Lady is always to refer us to Jesus, it would appear to be fine with our Lady too.

It’s all in Romans 14, all in Romans 14. What *do* they teach in schools these days?