On the new Vatican norms for the discernment of supernatural phenomena

Much of the talk last week was about the new Vatican norms for the discernment of supernatural phenomena—apparitions especially, but not exclusively—presented at a press conference in Rome on Friday.

The run-up to the presser was a hoot, with some secular outfits even spinning the business as the Vatican weighing in on the existence of intelligent alien life. I’ll buy a plane ticket with my own money for that presser if I have to, honest, but it wasn’t on the cards this time.

What we got was still worth a good, close look.

Responsibility, Accountability, Transparency

The new norms introduce new categories—six of them—for determining the status of alleged apparitions and other similar phenomena. There’s lots to say about the new categories, but most of that will come later. The new categories appear to give greater overall flexibility to those responsible for judging of such matters. What’s arguably more important is that the norms appear on paper at least to be a real step toward greater transparency in the whole discernment process.

The last time the Vatican published norms for the discernment of supernatural phenomena, the man who would become Pope St. Paul VI was reigning in Rome. So, it’s been a minute as the kids say, but really only just a minute in ecclesiastical reckoning. There’s lots of water under the bridge since then, though, and much has changed in the world, especially in the ways we communicate and travel. So, the problems are bigger and some of them are different in kind.

We’ve known since 2011 that Paul VI’s norms required local bishops to consult with the Vatican whenever they investigated phenomena that could be of supernatural origin. Under the old norms, local bishops had to talk with Rome but were free to make their own determinations. Also, and more importantly, the locals had to keep mum about their consultations. Local bishops, in other words, couldn’t say what Rome said to them about the thing(s) the locals were examining.

Local bishops, in other words, bore all of the public responsibility for judgments that were theirs only in part (if they were really the locals’ judgments at all).

The process and the judgments and those actually making or directing them are now brought into the light of day, and that is to the good.

Hard cases make bad law

Most of what talk there was about the norms had to do with controversial sites like Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. There’s good reason for that. Medjugorje has drawn millions of people over the past thirty-odd years, ever since, well, something started happening there in the early 1980s.

The new norms may appear designed to make it easier for Vatican types to resolve similarly vexed situations in the future. The prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Victor Manuel “Tucho” Fernandez, conceded in response to journalists’ queries during the presser on Friday, May 17^th, that “it would be easier” to reach a conclusion about Medjugorje under the new norms.

The thing is, though, that “Medj” is a situation—like many others through the years and down the centuries—that got out of hand almost as soon as it started. There’s been all sorts of bad behavior alleged among the supposed seers, the local Church authorities, civic and political leaders, inter alia.

People continue to come, though, and that’s something. Maybe Our Lady is appearing there, and maybe she isn’t. Maybe she did appear, maybe she didn’t. Faithful from every corner of the globe most certainly have been going to the site of the alleged apparition for decades—in droves—and they’ve been praying together and confessing their sins and hearing Mass and making acts of devotion.

Spiritual fruit will come of that.

The merely curious have gone to see what there is to see at Medj. Some of them have seen their lives transformed. That is something, too.

The Vatican has intervened numerous times, but the popularity of the site is such, that a final negative judgment on the supernatural origin of the phenomena there could cause a real ruckus. Medjugorje, in short, is a hard case. It is a maxim that “hard cases make bad law” and the reason it is a maxim is that it is true.

There aren’t paper norms as can be counted on to counter the messiness of human nature, not at Medjugorje and not anywhere.

I don’t much care about Medjugorje, to be perfectly frank. Either Our Lady appeared (appears) there, or she didn’t (doesn’t). I tend to think it’s the second one, but if Mother Church proposes it to me for belief, I’ll believe it.

That last consideration—a personal opinion, I readily admit, and I thank the Reader for indulgence of it—shades perceptibly into the wonkier portion of the whole business: the new categories, themselves. There may well be a good something to them, if they are properly construed and consistently applied. They may also prove to be a sort of Act for the Better Government of Miraculous Phenomena.

Time will tell, but let’s dig in.

A little Latin is a dangerous thing

Under the old disposition, a local bishop could issue a judgment: Constat de supernaturalitate. A judgment of constat de supernaturalitate does not quite say that a phenomenon is certainly of supernatural origin, but only that “it [clearly] evinces [signs of the] supernatural.”

The opposite of constat under the old scheme was—you guessed it—non constat (de supernaturalitate), which simply meant that there were lacking sufficient grounds for agreement on the origin of the phenomenon.

A judgment of constat de supernaturalitate did not compel an assent of faith, in other words, but only proposed its object as worthy of belief. The point is that it did propose something.

The new norms, on the other hand, borrow from bureaucratic argot to create a new category: Nihil obstat, which does not propose anything as worthy of belief but only says that there is nothing standing in the way of believing in the supernatural origin of a given phenomenon. That’s nice to know, but it really only tells us something about what isn’t there.

In all, the new scheme has six degrees, only one of which—the “lowest” or “worst”—actually proposes anything.

We’ve dealt with the highest or most secure category, Nihil obstat.

Next is: Prae oculis habeatur, which literally says “It ought to be held before the eyes” and means in essence that, while there are elements recommending the authenticity of a given phenomenon, other ambiguous or confusing or otherwise dangerous things—dangerous to the person or persons experiencing the phenomenon directly and / or to the faithful—are to be kept in mind.

The next category: Curatur. “Care should be taken,” in plain English, to ensure that too much enthusiasm does not spread. It is a category for situations in which, to say it with the DDF: “[Word of a] phenomenon has already spread widely, and there are verifiable spiritual fruits connected to it,” such that “a ban that could upset the People of God.”

If a judgment of Curatur is entered, the local bishop “is asked not to encourage this phenomenon.” Rather, he is “to seek out alternative expressions of devotion and possibly reorient its spiritual and pastoral aspects.”

Fourth on the list: Sub mandato. Literally, is it “under [a] mandate” or stricture. This category introduces and operates a most useful distinction. “[C]ritical issues” associated with cases sub mandato “are not connected to the phenomenon itself.” In other words, there’s no discernible issue with the possibly supernatural phenomenon itself. In fact, the category appears designed for application to cases “rich in positive elements,” but involving “a person, a family, or a group of people who are misusing it.” More precisely, the category is made for application to the person(s) misusing the phenomenon.

Hucksters gon’ huckster, and the DDF knows it. Everybody knows it. Curatur and sub mandato give those responsible some tools for dealing with inevitable hucksterism.

Fifth: Prohibetur et obstruatur. Those of you who remember your school Latin will see that this category does two things: It says that promotion of a given phenomenon is to be prohibited and obstructed—forbidden in words and actively blocked—by Church authority. There may be “legitimate requests and some positive elements” associated with whatever business is afoot, but “the critical issues and risks associated with this phenomenon appear to be very serious.” In short: the bad outweighs the good, and the local bishop needs to nip the business in the bud.

“Therefore,” the DDF’s description of the category reads, “to prevent further confusion or even scandal that could erode the faith of ordinary people, the Dicastery asks the Diocesan Bishop to declare publicly that adherence to this phenomenon is not allowed.”

One important thing that emerges from the precise language describing the nature and purpose of the Prohibetur et obstruatur category: The new scheme is very much a top-down affair. This is further illustrated by a specification included in the DDF’s description of the category, according to which the local Ordinary is “asked to offer a catechesis that can help the faithful understand the reasons for the decision and reorient the legitimate spiritual concerns of that part of the People of God.”

It’s tough to say whether that specification is designed to create a ground for Vatican and/or papal intervention in the government of a diocese, but it certainly gives the DDF and the pope the wherewithal to assume at least the direct oversight of yet another aspect of a given bishop’s governance.

Sixth, and finally: Declaratio de non supernaturalitate. This one is actually at least a little more tricky than it lets on, because a “declaration of non-supernaturality” sounds like the affirmation that something is not the case. Now, anyone with five minutes’ training in logic will tell you it is impossible to prove a negative, and anyone telling you so would be right.

In this category, however, the DDF is really giving itself and the local bishop the specific power to declare that a purportedly supernatural phenomenon in fact has a natural origin.

Not only.

“This decision,” i.e. to issue a declaration de non supernaturalitate, “must be based on facts and evidence that are concrete and proven.” To illustrate, the DDF offers examples of an alleged visionary who admits to lying, or of elements emerging from credible witnesses that show a given phenomenon to have been based on “fabrication, an erroneous intention, or mythomania.”

Conspicuous by way of their absence from the DDF’s list is any example of a phenomenon proven to have merely natural origin, innocently misconstrued.

Practically speaking

The big takeaways from the document appear to be that there is no longer any official proposal for belief, that there are new ways to skin the supernatural cat, and that the Vatican is in charge of it all.

That first one appears to be in tension with the third one.

On the one hand, it is now unmistakably clear that the Vatican not only gets the final word but is involved in the investigation and adjudication of purportedly supernatural phenomena from the start. On the other hand, the Vatican will henceforth refrain from proposing even thoroughly vetted phenomena as worthy of belief and will limit itself to saying that nothing stands in the way of believing a given phenomenon to be of supernatural origin.

This may be the DDF’s way of allowing the faithful to decide whether to give or to withhold their credence, hence their devotion to an apparition or other possibly miraculous occurrence, while also guaranteeing—insofar as possible—that such phenomena at least are not manifestly manufactured and are mostly harmless if not positively wholesome.

The four “middle” categories—prae oculis habeatur, curator, sub mandato, prohibetur et obstruatur—all allow for varying degrees of circumspection regarding phenomena, according to the evidence and the pastoral requirements of particular situations.

The sixth and final category, constat de non supernaturalitate, is the most powerful and also the most ambiguous. That’s where the most trouble is usually found.

As with any similar proposal, the proof of the new scheme’s usefulness will be seen in its use.