| The Mel Gibson movie
The Passion of The Christ has caused new interest
in the writings of the Catholic mystics Venerable Anne
Catherine Emmerich, and Venerable Mary of Agreda.
Although the source of the movie is the Gospels,
Gibson nonetheless appears to have taken some inspiration
for his artistry from the writings of these two holy
Catholic women, whose writings he acknowledges were
important to the spiritual journey which lead him to make
the movie.
Anne Catherine Emmerich was an Augustinian nun
who was born 8 September 1774 at Flamsche, in the Diocese
of Münster, in
Germany and who died at Dulmen on 9 February 1824. During
her life she experienced the mystical phenomenon of the
stigmata, the wounds of Christ, which after a study
ordered by her bishop were judged by a panel of
physicians and clergy to be authentic. In addition she
had mystical visions, the content of which came to be
written down by Clemens Brentano, a man who served as her
secretary in this regard. Among the most famous of her
writings is the The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus
Christ.
In 1892, well after her death, her Cause for
Beatification was introduced by the bishop of Münster.
She subsequently attained to the title of Venerable,
indicating Rome's recognition that she lived a life of
heroic virtue. However, in 1928 Rome suspended the
Cause of Beatification when it was suspected that
Brentano fabricated material attributed to her. The Holy
See has since permitted the Cause to be re-opened on the sole
issue of her life, without reference to the possibly
doctored writings. On 2 July 2003 a decree of a miracle was
promulgated by the Congregation for the Causes of the
Saints,
opening the way for her Beatification (L'Osservatore
Romano N. 29, 16 July 2003, 2).
Venerable Mary of Agreda was a Spanish
Franciscan nun, who lived between 1602 and 24 May 1665.
Her Cause was almost immediately introduced after her
death, in 1672, as she had lived a life of evident
holiness in the eyes of her contemporaries. During her
life she had experienced mystical phenomena including
private revelations. The content of these revelations
were written down under obedience and after her death
were widely circulated in Spain. The most famous of these
writings is the Mystical City of God: Divine History
of the Virgin, Mother of God.
However, when Divine History came to the
attention of the Holy Office (called today the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), it was
condemned on 4 August 1681, on the basis of an evaluation
by the University of Paris, and put on the Index of
Forbidden Books by Pope Innocent XI. The Pope
subsequently suspended its effect, at the request of the
King of Spain. Other studies of the work by prestigious
Catholic universities in Spain and elsewhere vindicated
it, and in 1713 the Holy Office indicated that the
suspension of the condemnation applied everywhere.
However, certain historical questions still remain
concerning possible editorial changes after Mary of
Agreda's death. Such questions, as in the case of Anne
Catherine Emmerich, may never be adequately resolved.
How should such writings be treated today? The
answer to this is two-fold.
First, as private revelations such writings must not
be accorded equal or greater authenticity than the
Gospels themselves. Private revelations are not given by
God to satisfy curiosity or to fill in the gaps of the
historical details left out of the Scriptures. Rather,
they occur within the context of the prayer life of an
individual. A person who has passed through the initial
stage of growth in sanctity, called the Purgative Way, in
which they have meditated on the Gospels, on Christ's
life, on Church teaching, and have exhausted what human
language can provide them as food for prayer, enter upon
an Illuminative Way in which God provides them new food
for contemplation, not descriptions of Christ's life but
scenes from it. As the proverb says, a picture is
worth a thousand words. The purpose is to bring
the intellect to rest in God who is Truth, and to inflame
the will to love God who is Good.
As St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross make
clear, however, although God can give new lights, most
private revelation is "constructed" from the building
materials of the memory and knowledge of the person. This
means that the mystic's own religious, cultural and
educational influences help determine how the visions are
presented to them. This accounts, for example, for the
variety in the details of the same events among different
mystics. Some details may have been supplied by God,
others taken from the presuppositions of the mystic.
Since God's purpose is not to improve upon Scripture but
to inflame the will with love, the source of the details
are ultimately irrelevant to that purpose. In the end,
the Church judges the authenticity of such writings not
by these details but whether anything is contrary to
faith and morals. It does not, therefore, guarantee that
every detail is true, only that it is theologically safe.
Secondly, in addition to the general "problem" of
interpreting private revelation there is also the
specific problem of the uncertainties associated with
these particular writings. Both factors argue for reading
the writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich and Mary of
Agreda as a means to inflame one's love for God and for
neighbor, and not as an appendix to Sacred Scripture.
Toward that end they can be very fruitful, just as The
Passion of The Christ can lead to a fruitful personal
meditation on the sufferings of the Lord, without being
historical in all its details.
An Example. An example of the principle of God
using what is already known by the mystic to form a
vision or private revelation is the placement of the
nails, and its corollary, the location of the stigmata in
those saints who have had them. Scripture doesn't tell us
with precision how Jesus was nailed. The Hebrew word in
Psalm 22:16 is usually translated hand, but could
apply to the wrist or adjacent forearm, as well.
Nonetheless, the artistic tradition
usually portrays the palm of the hand, while mystics propose a
variety of placements from palm to wrist to forearm. On
the other hand, the Shroud of Turin and historical
studies of crucifixion argue strongly that the Crucified
was nailed through the wrist, as the only part which
could support a body's weight. Do the differences among
mystics, and with the likely actual case (the wrist), make
a palm or forearm placement of the wounds inauthentic?
Not according to Catholic mystical theology, which
recognizes the subjective (personal) element in
mysticism, and which therefore allows for differences in
such details. In The Passion of The Christ Mel
Gibson has chosen to follow Emmerich's placement, a
choice which is both artistically and theologically
justifiable.
For more information on the role of Private Revelation
in the Church see:
http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/apparitions.htm
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