tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post3439971915748900922..comments2024-03-05T06:16:30.628-06:00Comments on Mary and Mariology: Investigating the Immaculate Conception: Skepticism and interpretation of the visions of childrenServant of Maryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-84415448486515772522015-11-23T12:51:05.248-06:002015-11-23T12:51:05.248-06:00This post made me realize that I don't think w...This post made me realize that I don't think we've seen anyone say that of course Mary reveals herself to little children, just like in Jesus' praise of God: "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children." (Mt 11:25). I blogged about Sor Maria using this verse, but not about the little children who see the apparitions. I think that might be yet another way in which what might look like modern skepticism is really the same ancient desire for signs to prove that divine things really are divine, that people ask for throughout the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.<br />-- ADMServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-15461115412288272552015-11-22T16:26:45.000-06:002015-11-22T16:26:45.000-06:00There are two things that you say here that I thin...There are two things that you say here that I think point to the real question we face in making sense of the accounts of these apparitions: "(or, if it is not in fact a new tradition, it is better recorded at Fatima and Lourdes than it was in medieval sources)" and "which has developed into a new form of devotion for an era that is, in general, more skeptical of miracles and miraculous vision." The modern world (thanks to the likes of David Hume et al.) likes to think of itself as more skeptical than (by the modern world's own self-definition) the pre-modern, but is this in fact what we see in the sources that we have read? Over and over, we have encountered instances of what we would call skepticism if they were more recent--beginning with the skepticism of whether Mary was in fact the virgin prophesied by Isaiah and including Nestorius's skepticism about the title "Theotokos," the Carolingians' skepticism about the apocryphal accounts of the assumption, the eleventh-century skepticism about the saying of the Marian office, Bernard of Clairvaux's skepticism about celebrating the feast of the Conception, the Dominicans' skepticism about the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, her own skepticism about whether Sor Maria actually appeared to the natives in north Texas. Why then are we so convinced that the modern world is more skeptical, when in fact (again, as we have seen) many of the methods for investigating the truth claimed by Mary's devotees have been centuries in development? This is the difficulty that I was trying to point to in making sense of the devotion as we see it in the 19th and 20th century apparitions: suddenly, it looks like what we were expecting Marian devotion to look like, and yet... should we not be skeptical of such protestations having seen them over and over again all quarter? RLFBServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-18455627861796634662015-11-22T13:21:46.890-06:002015-11-22T13:21:46.890-06:00One thing that I would have liked to see more of h...One thing that I would have liked to see more of here is a consideration of just what may have led to the shift you point to between spiritual training and knowledge of Scripture as an asset for visionaries to knowledge and training as a detriment. It seems that there's a sense that actually knowing the vast background of information we've surveyed about the Virgin becomes viewed with greater suspicion, more likely to suggest that the visionary made things up or that the vision was somehow constructed, and it's that last part, about the idea of what exactly a vision is that is (to my eyes) most interesting. Are the visions of these children of the same character as, for example, Elizabeth's visions? Or are they an entirely different sort of thing? What does that tell us about ideas of mystical vision or about how God acts (through Mary) in the world?dyingsthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02087241514388178221noreply@blogger.com