Alexander Brüggemann (KNA)
Since the 18th century, Marian apparitions have been categorised as “private revelations”. As such, they raise theological problems, since according to Church teaching, God’s revelation came to an end with the death of the last apostle. The Magisterium therefore makes a sharp distinction between revelation and private revelation. The latter can only recall, explain or actualise the original revelation. According to the World Catechism, every Catholic is free to believe in private revelation or not – even if the Church regards it as certain. On Friday, the Vatican presented new norms for the examination of Marian apparitions.
Critics such as the British historian David Blackbourn see Lourdes in the south of France, where the “Immaculate Conception” is said to have appeared to the shepherdess Bernadette Soubirous a total of 18 times in 1858, as a kind of pattern for subsequent apparitions: a simple-minded visionary from the people, characterised by poverty, illness or neglect and rough treatment by parents or environment; communication of a pious message, healing waters and construction of a shrine (spring and chapel); rejection by the parish priest and civil authorities, reports of miraculous healings and finally the establishment of an official church cult.
In popular piety, Marian apparitions complement the so-called images of grace, where a place of pilgrimage develops around an image or statue of the Mother of God. The first reports of Marian apparitions can be traced back to early Christianity. As early as the year 41, Mary is said to have appeared to St James on a pillar. Throughout the Middle Ages, the typical visionary of the Virgin Mary remained male, adult and mostly a cleric.
It was only relatively late that a different image became established: Girls from the common people are the “chosen ones”, shepherds for the most part, the place is secluded in the woods and meadows. Examples include the Alpine village of La Salette in 1846, the Pyrenean village of Lourdes in 1858 and Marpingen in the Saarland in 1876. Experts see the apparitions in connection with economic and political crises: famine, cholera, crop failures. There was an accumulation in the 1850s to 1870s, during the First World War and around the crisis year of 1933.
Their number is in the hundreds throughout Europe, with peaks in the Catholic countries of Italy and France. But there are also relevant reports from Latin America, Africa and Asia. Nevertheless, only very few apparitions were authorised by the Church. In France, these were La Salette, Lourdes and Pontmain. They were used to prepare or seal the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. At the same time, the bishops succeeded in gradually channelling the veritable Marian wave, for example by founding Marian congregations.
In 1930, the visions of three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, were recognised by the Church; soon after, the apparitions of Beauraing in 1932 and Banneux in 1933, all of which were similar to Lourdes. Since then, no other apparition has received official authorisation. A special case is Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Here, according to the visionaries, the alleged apparitions have continued since 24 June 1981 and number in the tens of thousands.
There is still no “German Lourdes”: after the Briton Blackbourn brought the almost forgotten history of Marpingen out of the shadows of the past in 1997, three new “visionaries” were found in 1999. In 1876, three children from Marpingen reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary, attracting tens of thousands to the Härtelwald within a week. In the end, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck ordered the Prussian army to march and block access to the forest.
In 1999, the then Bishop of Trier, Hermann Josef Spital, announced a thorough investigation and forbade any mention of “apparitions” and “visionaries”. He coolly called them the “events in the Härtelwald”. In 2005, his successor in Trier, Bishop Reinhard Marx, declared that it was “not certain that the events in Marpingen in 1876 and 1999 had a supernatural character”.