Select
Page

The apparitions of

GARABANDAL

BY
F. SANCHEZ-VENTURA Y PASCUAL

APPENDIX B

Page 200

than from heaven; he speaks of the confessional as an offence against morals and juvenile candor. He describes the making of statues as a profanation of the laws of God, forbidden by the Bible; he gives an estimate of the number of medals manufactured, and the profits earned by this practice; he considers the references of the Virgin of Fatima to a possible conversion of Russia to be an invention on the part of Pope Pius XII in his anti-communist policy; he makes out the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima to be a mere political party, and one which invests millions of dollars in its publicity campaigns; he affirms that, out of gratitude for his declaring the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Fatima ceremoniously addressed the Pope as "Holy Father"; he gives the Virgin's difference of apparel, as reported by the visionaries, as further evidence of fraud and fantasy, he says that a woman who has suffered greatly and died in her old age cannot appear young and beautiful; and so on.

   I think all comment would be superfluous. The book is clearly nothing but a ferocious, savage, sacrilegious attack, packed with dire hatred and ill-will towards the Church, the Pope, the Virgin Mary, the angels, the Infant Jesus, the Holy Eucharist, Confession, the lot. The only thing that has come through unscathed so far is the Bible.

   As for his language, he says in his prologue that it was not meant to be insulting. Yet, when speaking of the visible miracle of the Holy Communion administered by the angel to one of the visionaries at Garabandal, Monroy comments on the case in terms that the most daring pen would hesitate to reproduce.

   Let this suffice. We could speak of celestial bodies and of why it is logical for the Blessed Virgin to appear younger than at her death; we could also explain why it is not absurd for Our Blessed. Mother to appear in different garb, just as nobody questions Monroy's own identity simply because he changes his overcoat from one day to the next. We could likewise show that the visionary at Fatima referred to the Holy Father using the common term that she customarily used for him, without this necessarily meaning that the Virgin herself employed it—although there would not be anything very extraordinary in her descending to the intellectual level of the visionaries so that they could understand her properly. Indeed, a thousand arguments could be used to refute Monroy's case. But, what would be the point?

   The surprising thing about Monroy is that, after expressing himself in such terms as we have seen, he does not deny the existence of "supernatural" visions. What he denies is that such visions are the work of God. He considers the devil to be the prime originator of all apparitions, Lourdes, Our Lady of the Pillar at Zaragoza, Fatima, Garabandal and elsewhere. "The existence of the devil," he states, "cannot be denied if we simply reason a little. It would be the same as saying that evil does not exist, a statement that nobody would go so far as to venture. Nor can the devil be called a Christian invention. He is not; although the devil in Christianity is a being with his own personality, morally responsible for his own actions and totally different from the evil gods of ancient mythology, nevertheless, the belief in a negative force at work in the world is as old as the world itself."

   "It is the devil who deceives the visionaries, who blinds the intellect in order to make it impossible to distinguish between the truth and

Select
Page