Journal articles on the topic 'Centenary of the Marian apparitions'

RESUMENLa historia del cristianismo no se entiende sin el complejo fenómeno mariano. El culto mariano ha afianzado la construcción de identidades colectivas, pero también individuales. La figura de la Virgen María estableció un modelo de conducta desde cada contexto histórico-cultural, remarcando especialmente los ideales de maternidad y virginidad. Dentro del imaginario católico, la Europa contemporánea ha estado marcada por la formación de una cultura aparicionista que se ha generadoa partir de diversas apariciones marianas que han establecido un canon y un marco de interpretación que ha alimentado las guerras culturales entre secularismo y catolicismo.PALABRAS CLAVE: catolicismo, Virgen María, cultura aparicionista, Lourdes, guerras culturales.ABSTRACTThe history of Christianity cannot be understood without the complex Marian phenomenon. Marian devotion has reinforced the construction of collective, but also of individual identities. The figure of the Virgin Mary established a model of conduct through each historical-cultural context, emphasizing in particular the ideals of maternity and virginity. Within the Catholic imaginary, contemporary Europe has been marked by the formation of an apparitionist culture generated by various Marian apparitions that have established a canon and a framework of interpretation that has fuelled the cultural wars between secularism and Catholicism.KEY WORDS: Catholicism, Virgin Mary, apparicionist culture, Lourdes, culture wars. BIBLIOGRAFÍAAlbert Llorca, M., “Les apparitions et leur histoire”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des religions, 116 (2001), pp. 53-66.Albert, J.-P. y Rozenberg G., “Des expériences du surnaturel”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 145 (2009), pp. 9-14.Amanat A. y Bernhardsson, M. T. (eds.), Imagining the End. Visions of Apocalypsis from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2002.Angelier, F. y Langlois, C. 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Marian apparitions, as diverse, global, and dynamic phenomena, offer opportunities for multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural analysis. We are pleased in this special issue to offer seven essays highlighting the increasing internationalization of Marian devotional movements. Our contributors, using both local case studies and a global, comparative view to explore instances of apparitions in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, collectively indicate three major points. First, apparitional movements are globally-connected, complex, and multi-layered. Second, apparitional movements are situated among so many social and political nodes that they are diverse, even internally, and therefore difficult to categorize. Third, apparitions are informed by both grassroots activism and institutional religious structures. These themes challenge categories in the study of religion, including disciplinary categories, and pose questions for further research.

Modern Marian apparitions have often responded to various incarnations of rational Enlightenment political thought, from the 1830 French revolution to Soviet socialism and the international Communist movement. Through her apparitions, the Virgin and her devotees have engaged in “cosmopolitics” by offering an alternative to a purely secular political order. Denying a mechanistic universe, Mary testifies to the existence of a compassionate, personal, miracle-working God. Although primarily a Roman Catholic phenomenon, Marian apparitions are also part of the Orthodox tradition, and the Virgin’s appearances in Russia and Ukraine after 1917 served to critique the new Marxist order. In 1984, the Mother of God continued her venture into cosmopolitics when she first spoke to Soviet citizen and spiritual seeker Veniamin Bereslavsky (“Blessed John”). Over the following decades, as the Communist world collapsed, Bereslavsky built an ecclesiastical organization and an international movement on the charismatic authority of these continuing revelations, which gradually have led him away from traditional Christianity to gnostic dualism. With thousands of followers, meeting in congregations from Ulan-Ude in eastern Russia to Glastonbury, England, Bereslavsky, who now lives in Spain, preaches ecumenical esotericism as a cosmopolitical alternative to Western secularism.

Based on an analysis of existing literature on Marian apparitions and field research-based case study from contemporary Transcarpathian Ukraine, this article asserts that an interpretation of Marian apparitional movements as a form of acquiescence to the authoritarian and conservative vision of the Catholic Church is too simplistic. The Virgin Mary appears in moments of crisis that are often caused or exacerbated by conflicts, especially ecclesiastical ones and it is also true that the sites of apparitions often do give a voice to those critical of modern changes. However, they are not always instrumentalized in support of conservative ideas. To the contrary, Marian apparitions are often sites of religious experimentation and innovation. On the one hand the Church can be extremely skeptical of or even hostile to apparitional events, still on the other hand the Church makes use of them as places of religious modernization with an aim to revitalize religious adherence.

Godine 2017. navršila se 140. obljetnica Marijinih ukazanja u Gietrzwałdu, malom selu u južnoj Warmiji na sjeveru Poljske. Dana 11. rujna 1977. godine ukazanja u Gietrzwałdu dobila su službeno odobrenje Katoličke crkve. Poruka koju Majka Božja upućuje vidiocima može se sažeti u tri rečenice: »Ja sam bezgrješno začeta Blažena Djevica Marija«; »Želim da molite krunicu svaki dan«; »Nemojte biti tužni jer ću uvijek biti s vama.« Marijanska ukazanja, klasificirana kao takozvana privatna objava, usmjerena su na otkrivenja božanske stvrnosti u nekom povijesnom razdoblju. Sadržaj marijanskih ukazanja obično se svodi na poziv za obraćenje, pokajanje ili molitvu. Stoga pruža važan poticaj za kršćansku obnovu, povratak evanđeoskom žaru i svetosti. Uzimajući u obzir suvremena teološka istraživanja, u ovom su članku navedena četiri glavna kriterija za prepoznavanje vjerodostojnosti marijanskih ukazanja: a) kristološka i crkvena referenca; b) dobri plodovi otkrivenja; c) čuda i druge natprirodne pojave; d) vjerodostojnost ljudi koji doživljavaju ukazanja. Analizirajući pozvane znakove koji ukazuju na istinitost ukazanja, autor zaključuje da su marijanska ukazanja u Gietrzwałdu potpuno vjerodostojna.

This article reflects upon Marian apparitions that occurred during the years 1961 to 1965 in the village of San Sebastián de Garabandal, or Garabandal, in northern Spain, giving rise to pilgrimages ever since. The events coincided with the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, or Vatican II. Garabandal is the only Marian apparition event to have prophesied and commented on Vatican II. Nevertheless, in Christendom, travelling to Garabandal is regarded as an alternative pilgrimage.The pilgrimage route is in several ways unique compared to journeys to other Marian pilgrimage shrines, since it has not yet been approved by the Catholic Church. Pilgrimages to Garabandal were even officially forbidden for several years. The Catholic Church authorities originally declared travelling to Garabandal as forbidden for church officials such as priests and others. This article gives an overview of the case of Garabandal through the years and reflect upon why this place is considered special in comparison to other pilgrimage sites. The study examines such aspects of pilgrimages to this village as location and motivation, the Virgin Mary and Marian apparitions and also the messages and miracles of Garabandal.

AbstractApocalyptic beliefs are common in modern Marian apparitions and represent an important area of tension between believers and skeptics—tension that in part determines the official Church stance toward, as well as popularity and longevity of, the apparition. Apocalypticism therefore is an important component of Catholic identity for many Marian devotees. Drawing from a case study of a modern apparition site in rural Emmitsburg, Maryland, I argue that apocalyptic beliefs shape Catholic identity by framing social and religious changes as evidence of coming chastisement; galvanize action among believers, who both prepare for and attempt to avert apocalypse; and validate the Catholic identity of those individuals marginalized within their communities because of those same apocalyptic beliefs. Using Christian Smith's subcultural identity theory of religious persistence and strength, as well as literature on apparitional movements, I describe the dynamics of apocalyptic belief in modern Marian apparitions, explore how the tension engendered by apocalypticism promotes strong identity through symbolic boundary marking, and argue that such beliefs shape Catholic identity for apocalyptic Catholics.

Marian apparitions attract modern masses since the 19th century. The radical message of the apparition asking for penitence and the return of public and politics to God resonated well within major parts of Catholicism. While popes kept promoting Marian pilgrimages in order to secure their public and political standing throughout the 20th and 21st century, they tried to control the masses and to attenuate the messages. Particularly since the Second Vatican Council, the popes tamed mobilization. Instead of stirring up the masses, popes kept modest at Marian apparitions sites. A quantitative analysis of the papal documents issued during papal journeys to Fatima, the most political apparition of the 20th century, shows that a modest religious discourse about God and world had been presented instead of promoting the critical messages of the apparition. Following the methodological ideal of parsimony, the analysis concentrates on the most uttered words during the journeys and compares the four pontificates since Paul VI. Instead of stressing the radical message of Fatima, which is introduced in the discussion of the findings, the pontificates share a modest Catholic discourse.

This article situates the mass mariophanies reported at Zeitoun (Cairo), Egypt, from 1968 to 1971 in their historical, political, interfaith, and ecumenical contexts. The series of luminous apparitions above St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church were first observed by nearby Muslim public transit workers. Soon after, the site attracted tens of thousands of Christian and Muslim pilgrims, many of whom observed bright light in the form of the Virgin Mary in addition to other manifestations, such as dove-shaped lights hovering above or near the church. Miraculous healings were also reported. The Zeitoun apparitions serve as a unique instance within the broader study of Marian apparitions by providing a non-Catholic example that took place within a Muslim-majority nation over a span of nearly three years. Moreover, full contextualization of the events in Zeitoun requires interdisciplinary attention spanning Middle Eastern, Islamic, and ecumenical studies; as such, the apparitions invite further and fuller examination in the secondary literature.

This paper will analyze the shaping of supposed Marian apparitions in Pesqueira, a Brazilian city located in Pernambuco, as part of a series of events related to the devotions to Our Lady representations in modern and contemporary periods. Based on the propositions of Cultural History, regional newspapers, ecclesiastical documents, and personal letters were used in order to understand the relation of these events to political, economic, and social issues of the first half of the 20th century. The analysis will suggest that the events in Pesqueira were connected to other religious representations, such as the apparitions in Lourdes (France) and Fatima (Portugal), reinforcing the image of the 20th century as the “golden century” of apparitions to members and followers of the Catholic Church. Therefore, this work highlights the central performance of ecclesiastics, scholars, and devotees in the shaping of new devotions and cults in a specific space in Latin America.

In modern Marian apparitions, Mary’s material presence is evoked for believers, who negotiate religious and other identities around her maternal figure. My contention, drawing from material theories of religion and postcolonial theories, and based on ethnographic fieldwork at one apparition site in addition to social scientific literature, is that Roman Catholic devotees of Mary negotiate identities along three trajectories. First, apparitions offer sites for individuals to articulate ethnic and national identities through devotional practices. Second, individuals bring apparitional messages and interpretations to bear on contemporary political concerns. Finally, sites afford opportunities for devotees to foster relationships with Mary as agent. Material and postcolonial theories illustrate how embodiment and presence inform devotees’ identities as children of Mary.

In this article, we sketch the field of qualitative video-analysis and locate videography within this. Instead of presenting the methods of videography formally, we illustrate the application of this method in a particular field: Marian apparitions occurring in a German town in 1999, captured live on video. The presentation of the method in this paper follows a general methodological structure. (1) We first outline the ethnographic context of the setting in which the video-recordings were made. This context includes actors, religious associations, and locations as well as some aspects of the apparitional events’ historical genesis. (2) We then turn to look at the performance of the Marian vision as recorded in the video. By applying sequential analysis, we roughly identify a temporal order to the event, which exhibits an interesting deviation from earlier forms of apparitions due to the way it takes a subjectively “spiritual” form. This finding leads us to finally (3) address the role of the subjective perspective that, as we argue, is a further essential dimension of videography. It is on this level that we are made aware of the relevance of the life-world as a methodological background for the kind of interpretive social science that takes the actor’s perspective into account.

In the late summer and fall of 1950, Juliet Hughes, a self-appointed promoter of a Marian apparition at Lipa in the Philippines, joined the crowds assembling for apparitions of the Virgin in Necedah, Wisconsin. The story of Hughes’ visits to Necedah—including a miraculous rose petal she brought from Lipa as well as her meetings with visionary Mary Ann Van Hoof and a number of Necedah pilgrims—highlights the importance of person-to-person encounters at an active apparition site. Indeed, the events described here suggest that when miraculous objects and miracle stories are shared among various sites, these encounters can trigger powerful experiences of signs that enable devotees to perceive these apparitions as testifying to the same transcendent reality. These experiences function as building blocks for a global apparition network.

ABSTRACT: On the thirteenth of each month, from October 1990 until May 1994, Nancy Fowler appeared on the porch of a farmhouse in Conyers, Georgia, to deliver the message she had received from an apparition of the Virgin Mary. On apparition days, up to 80,000 people brought rosaries and cameras to the grounds of the farm. This essay analyzes the use of traditional religious discourse and modern technologies such as photography by participants in the Conyers gatherings. Participants have also employed electronic mail and electromagnetic wave measurements to verify and legitimate the monthly apparitions. My analysis suggests that Conyers brings together traditional Marian discourse and modern technology to create a dynamic and popular religious setting.

This article explores the prophetic and priestly, or sacramental, authority of visionary Adele Brise, a Belgian immigrant to Wisconsin who in 1859 received a vision of the Virgin Mary that became known as the apparition of Our Lady of Good Help. In this article, I show that when the prophetic dimension of Mary’s locution to Brise was fulfilled, Brise’s authority increased dramatically; moreover, when Brise subsequently was excommunicated for refusing to remain silent about the apparition, she preached to and said Mass for her followers. When, 150 years later, Church authorities approved the apparition as “worthy of belief,” they created an official interpretation of Brise’s obedience to Church authorities, but such obedience is not supported by archival or other contemporary accounts. The story of Adele Brise and the apparition of Our Lady of Good Help provides an important context for understanding the tension between clergy and laity within the context of Marian apparitions, and it illustrates the extent to which these apparitions can provide access to sacred authority for visionaries and their followers.

An international bestseller when it first appeared in 1941 and the inspiration for an Academy-award winning film, Franz Werfel's historical novel The Song of Bernadette has received surprisingly little critical attention. Written against the background of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the Song chronicles the Marian apparitions at Lourdes, France, in 1858 and the life of the young visionary, Bernadette Soubirous. A once-celebrated émigré writer, Werfel identified himself as both Jewish and Christian. His Song of Bernadette deserves recognition not only as a masterpiece of realistic hagiography, but also as a complex philosophical and theological commentary on modernism and Judeo-Christianity.

This article extends recent scholarship on new religious movements that has stressed newness, tension, and social alignment. New Catholic communities that have grown around contemporary Marian apparitions allow the application of theoretical models and add nuance to understandings of new movements in the Catholic context. Drawing from fieldwork since 2010 at two apparition sites, rural Emmitsburg, Maryland and suburban Gaithersburg, Maryland, I find that apparitional movements—often marginalized within their parishes—lead to internal tension for individuals involved. The ways that these individuals resolve this tension problematize notions of conflict and alignment, tradition, and innovation. I propose that philosopher Rosi Braidotti’s metaphor of transpositions offers an apt approach to apparitional movements.

Marian apparitions and miraculous images in Mexico inevitably bring to mind one renowned figure — Our Lady of Guadalupe and its shrine at Tepeyac in the Valley of Mexico. Guadalupe is, indeed, a touchstone to the history of Catholicism and popular devotion in Mexico, and Mexico is a special case of a religious image becoming the main symbol for an emerging nation. As Jeannette Rodríguez recently wrote, “To be of Mexican descent is to recognize the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.” But devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe has a history. This image has not always been, and in some ways still is not, the dominant symbol throughout Mexico, and the location of its principal shrine on the edge of Mexico City is as much a key to its importance as is its association with the oldest Marian apparition officially recognized by the Catholic Church. Dozens of different shrines to other miraculous images have captured the hearts of thousands, sometimes millions of followers in Mexico. They still do.

This paper is dedicated to the photographic coverage of the alleged miraculous apparitions, which occurred in the small French village of Tilly-sur-Seulles between 1896 and 1897. These photos, circulated as postcards and appearing in popular magazines of the time such as L’Illustration and Le Monde illustré, were presented – by virtue of the authority of the photographic as an indexical trace – as “authentic” testimonials of the supernatural events, though in fact neither recognized nor approved by the Catholic Church. These photographs used the already-known double exposure process of spirit photography, bringing these exotic visual materials into the tradition of religious “authentic fakes”. But more importantly, such images manifested the “visionary fervour” of late nineteenth-century France, that is, the growing desire of the modern crowd to see the invisible in more and more spectacular and convincing ways. Such a new spectatorial desire – that can also be found in the very successful genre of the photographs of the real bodies of mystics, saints, and seers – would be perfected by a whole series of contemporary forms and attractions, and finally, by cinematographic special effects. Keywords: nineteenth century, Marian apparitions, visionaries, photography, superimposition

This article examines and interprets the phenomenon of Medjugorje as a new religious phenomenon. The name of this Bosnian-Herzegovinian village not only refers to a long series of Marian apparitions, but it is also used as a metaphor for the religious and political developments that occur in relation to those visions. The argument is that in the context of interaction with nationalist agendas and church politics, Medjugorje must be seen as a contested apparitional site that has reinvented itself into a highly successful grassroots religious movement. Medjugorje devotees and the faithful, inspired by tradition, are creating an idiosyncratic devotional expression of Catholicism, in which the individual endures the hardships of pilgrimage for a personalized experience of charismatic gifts and the miraculous. The article contends that this distinguishes this devotional movement from mainstream Catholic pilgrimage culture.

This article provides a study of the organizational development and self-understanding of the Spanish Palmarian movement that emerged from a series of Marian apparitions in the Andalusian town of Palmar de Troya beginning in 1968. Within a year the leading visionary was Clemente Domínguez, whose received messages leveled severe criticism against the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church. In the mid-1970s, the Palmarians ordained their own priests and consecrated their own bishops; in 1978, Domínguez declared himself divinely elected pope and founded the Palmarian Church. At the beginning, Palmar de Troya was a typical apparition case, but development of apparition contents, a solid financial base, and the tumultuous relationship with the Roman Catholic Church eventually led to the founding of a separate church. From its inception, the Palmarian Church claimed that the outside world was evil, but with time it has become even more closed and exclusive.

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a depth-psychological analysis of the mass visions of the Virgin Mary taking place at Zeitoun, Egypt, during the late 1960s. A review of the literature points to a prevailing socio-political approach to examining visions of the Virgin Mary, while I argue that a satisfactory psychoanalytical approach is generally lacking. The interpretation I propose draws on Jung’s theoretical model inFlying Saucerswith the aim of merging depth-psychology and historical material surrounding the Zeitoun phenomenon. Common themes and symbols are extracted and interpreted from the empirical material and analysed along with Egyptian social and political data. This study concludes with a discussion on how depth-psychological principles grounded in empirical and historical material could be applied in order to explicate cases of mass visions.

This article examines the Marian shrines of Walsingham (England) and Meryem Ana (Turkey). Walsingham was a popular pilgrimage site until the Reformation, when Catholic sacred places were disestablished or destroyed by Protestants. Meryem Ana is linked to Walsingham, in that both shrines feature healing springs and devotion to the cult of the “Holy House” of the Virgin Mary. Walsingham is now home to multi-faith pilgrimages, New Age seekers and secular tourists. Meryem Ana is a rare Christian shrine in Islamic Turkey, where mass tourists rub shoulders with devout Christians supporting the small Greek Catholic community in residence. This article emerged from the experience of walking the Walsingham Way, a modern route based on the medieval pilgrimage in 2012, and visiting Meryem Ana in 2015 while making a different pilgrimage, that of an Australian attending the centenary of the Gallipoli landings. Both shrines are marketed through strategies of history and heritage, making visiting them more than simply tourism. Both sites offer a constructed experience that references the Middle Ages and Christianity, bringing modern tourism in an increasingly secular world into conversation with ancient and medieval pilgrimage and the religious past.

The aim of this article is to emphasize the importance of religion in man’s life and devotional phenomenology in the historical context of pilgrimages to the Shrines of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary. The intention is to show her various iconographies, for which she performed in her various sacred spaces in Ibero-American countries, where thousands of devotees move from their cities and even countries to worship and worship the Virgin Mother, in search of the indulgences in order to achieve spiritual peace and comfort for your afflictions.

Nicole Brossard’s Hier and Diane Schoemperlen’s Our Lady of the Lost and Found were published in 2001. Both novels explore contemporary “turns” in the humanities—turns that can be seen as a betrayal of the secular worldview and the focus on the New World that dominated our literary concerns of the late twentieth century. Brossard’s text “betrays” contemporary literary and cultural considerations in its foregrounding of accumulated Old World knowledge and religious art. In Hier, Brossard makes multiple references to two religious figures of Catholicism: Marie Guyart—Marie de l’Incarnation, the founder of the Ursuline order in Québec—and the Virgin Mary. In this novel, Brossard is beginning to explore the idea of looking to those women associated with the mystical world, knowledge of whom is buried in our collective memories, in order to turn to mysticism as a way of accessing that “high” provided by metaphysical experiences. Diane Schoemperlen’s novel, Our Lady of the Lost and Found (Our Lady), reveals a number of similar preoccupations to those found in Brossard’s Hier. In Our Lady, a narrator/writer, is “visited” by the Virgin Mary near the beginning of the novel, and the text then alternates between credible domestic scenes and stories of other Marian apparitions, most of which, as Schoemperlen assures us in an afterword, are “based on actual documented accounts” (Our Lady 339). Our Lady contains many reflective passages: comments on historiography; philosophy; and reflections on the nature of story, truth, science and history. The didactic impulse is very strong in both novels, and the urge to teach is centered on works of religious art from Old World civilizations. Faced with the turmoil of the contemporary world, the narrator of Our Lady explores that other world: the world of miracles, Marian apparitions and the thin place to which the act of writing takes one. In this article, Marie Vautier explores how these two 2001 novels highlight mystical women of the religious past, in their discussion of art, culture, the Old World versus the New World, and the limits of the contemporary worldview in a (re)turn to mysticism and summa plus ultra experiences.