EWTN Bookmark - A Still, Small Voice - Doug Keck with Fr. Benedict Groeschel - 07-24-2011

this month we're bringing you some of our favorite bookmark episodes recorded over the years with our good friend father Benedict Groeschel we hope you enjoy the following interview from our bookmark archives and welcome once again to EWTN bookmark I'm Doug Keck your host with a very special author and guest father Benedict Groeschel this time we're speaking about his work a still small voice published by Ignatius press welcome father Groeschel always a pleasure to have you here in person obviously it's wonderful every Sunday for our audience to be able to visit with you on our Sunday night with father Benedict Groeschel show but it's great always to get an opportunity to talk to you about one of your other applications writing and now this book is a book from the past this book is about 14 or 15 years old but I always thought it was a classic a still small voice what's it about it's about private revelations and what the Church teaches us about how to deal with the private revelations it by no means is against private revelation certain private revelations are very significant in my own life the Sacred Heart divisions at Lourdes at Fatima for instance just to name a couple but as you know there are endless reports of private revelations and people don't know that the church has some teaching on this about what you should do and how things are evaluated how things are evaluated and what a person should do if they hear of a new report of private revelations how they should behave or if they believe they have received salicin right and how do they get approved initially what's universal approval is there ever an infallible statement on private revelations so there's a whole lot of questions and the book is still very popular right because every once in a while a bishop is confronted with the report of a private revelation and the first thing will happen I'll get an order for 20 so you know what's actually going on around the country revelation wise record real cold that's right 25 copies and I know something's going on now just before we go further I saw a name in here I recognize I see a John Lynch and I see a familiar kind of style of artwork on the cover that is grace many of your other books stumbling blocks and stepping stones etc now there's a father John Lynch who works with you on your show is that the same that is the same person well the John Lynch was college student at that time our seminary student and he's now pastor in Ellenville New York no time to do any more artwork that's for sure right now you say in the introduction written book you said this is a bit of enlightened self-interest on my part doing this book I need something to save time when serious people earnestly almost desperately ask questions about what is happening to them and their friends candidly I need to be able to hand someone a book while not a comprehensive study of private revelation this book will be I hope a helpful guide to the devout the responsible and even the merely curious now have you found that that one Lee is what the book is is a simplification and modernization of a great classical book it's a hundred years old called the graces of interior prayer by Augustine Poulain very very learned and wise Jesuit and such would be happy to get here voting that right and we simplify it and I think I'm faithful to Poulain I'm happy to say another Jesuit told me he likes the book very much and that's Cardinal Avery Dulles told me thought it was a good book so we're in some good company and we're talking about this book now you're right here in the beginning an appreciation of and sensitivity to ordinary religious experience frees a person from the possibility of serious error and spiritual pride yes because hopefully the vast majority of religious people have some spiritual experiences they feel close to God or they feel the absence of God which is the dark and sometimes God seems very close but to the wrong person in the sense of an imaginative person or perhaps a somewhat flighty person all of a sudden they can interpret that as a private revelation and indeed having listened to and read many reports of supposed private revelation I think that's exactly what happened mm-hmm you also say the monotony of sacrifice fidelity and generosity may be the safest and most productive of all religious experience and it is there waiting for all of us well of course there we have the marvelous quotation from st. Erasmus yeah somebody wanted to bring her to Lourdes and she said to ecstasy I prefer the monotony of sacrifice now I happen to be a great enthusiast for Lourdes and that marvelous little soul bird of death I only wish I had known Bernadette when I woke up after my accident and I found that I couldn't move and they told me what happened the first thing I did as I said I'm putting this whole thing it's a heads of Bernadette and Here I am you know Bernadette's been doing her job up there right and and I know you talked about her later in the book because you like her so much and you even juxtapose kind of like - Reza's experience and Bernadette's experience of why they're different Bernadette was a simple little peasant girl and she was the perfect witness she said what happened she never added a syllable she would not even initially say that she had seen the Blessed Virgin she said I saw a lady who said she was the Immaculate Conception well I said that's the Blessed Virgin I saw a lady who said she was the evacuate so Bernadette was really a ver wise little peasant girl she was a little fresh too you know Bernadette wasn't anything like Jennifer Jones and it's all over hearted that not at all Bernadette to almost be a little snippy the Monsignor who said to her do you expect me to believe the Blessed Virgin appeared to you she said no bon Savior I don't expect you to believe it it's not my job that I can believe it it's my job to tell you what she said Thank You Bernadette now Terez did not have these things Terez had the monotony of sacrifice and the beautiful autobiography that emerges from the writings of saint torres shows that what she experienced sometimes was darkness and the absence of God Berta res says shortly before her death I cannot say that I believe but that I choose to believe well in describing those two things for the average person who's out there who you know is interested in their Catholic faith in his spirituality isn't it more exciting to be connected to the kind of visions that like Bernadette kind of has if they're real right but isn't that the attraction for those yes could you talk about one of the issues about people being too curious yes and many spiritual writers warn people about that you see one of the reasons for the popularity of reports of private revelations is that some scholars have undermined the credibility of the Gospels and the New Testament Jesus didn't do that Jesus didn't do that to which I say were you there but some people hearing this look for a fifth gospel they look for a direct revelation of God they're unaware of the fact that the Pope says Pope Benedict the fourteenth that in no private revelation can you place faith all you can do is place positive Prudential prudent opinion and he criticizes three mystics canonized mystics and says that some of their reported revelations have error in them st. Catherine of Siena sent Hildegard of Bingen and oh I know there's an Brigid of Sweden Sweden right yes no they're all Saints Catherine of Siena's a doctor of the church but she said the Blessed Virgin revealed to her that she was not immaculately conceived Wow that's worthwhile knowing if you like private revelations and people say well how could that be right because the person getting the revelation is subject to error especially if it's a true revelation because then it is a infinite being touching the mind of a finite being a private revelation isn't the conversation between two people it may seem to the visionary like that like the children of Fatima they were talking to the lady right but that lady is from eternity those little children were smart enough to realize there was something different because they could see the trees behind the lady through her figure they knew that they were not having an ordinary perception then with Fatima you have the private revelation backed up by what's called a theophany which is a public manifestation of divine power and the theophany of Fatima in 1917 where tens of thousands of people saw the whirling Sun where the anti religious secular newspapers of Lisbon reported it the following Sunday reporters were there they took pictures got to see ah ffunny that's not a private revelation everybody says that that's the top of the line this is what we read about with Moses and that doesn't occur that often no the Transfiguration and the gospel appears to be as you mentioned just before to play off that st. Catherine Laboure who gave the world the miraculous medal actually predicted the bloody disturbances of the French commune forty years before they occurred and with the precise state however she made several other predictions that were wrong and it says here that she said you know basically the idea when confronted with these errors she simply apologized for getting the facts of the revelation wrong she obviously did not know what to say since she thought she had got the message right which is what you're saying and Catherine Laboure was the simple soul God usually chooses very simple Souls but I think and Catherine Laboure said I got it wrong so there's there's death a private revelation even to a canonized saint according to Pope Benedict the 14th can contain error mm-hmm now you also say because the visionary may have erred in the report of Revelation as you say one cannot conclude that this person has not received a special grace you also say it is also true that a visionaries proclaimed prophecy which turns out to be correct one cannot by that fact alone assume that they receive the revelation from God they may in fact have gained the knowledge in some other way by the way well most of us can predict it tomorrow morning we're going to eat breakfast I mean life is filled with obvious predictions a predictions of of an unusual event that does occur that's certainly worthy of very real attention part of my point in writing this is that people go from one extreme to the other either they absolutely don't accept private revelation we've got a couple of people teaching theology in the United States right now but 1:11 Notre Dame but he dismisses all this you know and dismiss the stigma of Padre Pio I don't think he's ever seen a stigma that I've seen five of them I don't think any of the five I saw were miraculous but in four cases they were authentic well the difference between miraculous and authentic authentic is that the person did not culpably deceive by making the wound okay they they occurred and they look very much like blood blisters and a person's a devout person and this phenomena in psychology called symbolic wounds can occur now if you take something like Padre Pio you had open wounds for 50 years which openly bled and never infected but even in the case of Padre Pio and I think his signature was miraculous he was not canonized because of the miraculous my friend pastor Bernard Ruffin in his excellent biography of Padre Pio not on the show book yes Padre Pio the truth story he says that Padre Pio is a saint because of how he dealt with these phenomena he didn't go looking for publicity he wasn't getting Public Relation you talk about that as being one of the signs of a true visionary or true revelation if I hear of any visionary supposedly seeking publicity I flee is a fact that no private revelation given to an adult in the last 300 years was accepted by the church if the identity of the visionary was known at the time of their death children or teenagers yes like Bernadette the other visionaries weren't on Tina Catherine Laboure Margaret Mary of the Sacred Heart their identity was not known at the time of their death okay people that break into the headlines I simply flee children because of their naivete the children of Fatima Bernadette people life they told people well none other distinction you made here that I thought related to what you said earlier about the innocence with Catherine Laboure telling what they thought it was is a distinction you make between false revelations and fraudulent revelations the fourth revelation is one that the visionary really thinks is authentic and that made I get these in the mail all the time people that I don't think had a revelation but they think they had a rebel and they're sincere as a result of writing this book I get tons of private revelation in the mail people want to see if it passes muster with you and it doesn't they were usually disappointed on the other hand a fraudulent revelation would be one where the person is constantly is purposely deceiving me consciously it's a lot of people right so Jeff and you talk about a couple of going back to scriptural days with the Lord Simon Magus and on through with Franciscan nun Magdalena of the cross Oh Magdalena there's there's what you should hear about Saint John of the Cross the great mystic doctor was very very very low on private revelations he said what is a report of the private revelation you should assume but it's the work of the devil until the opposite could be professor that's a tough position but he lived at the time of this nun Magdalena of the Cross who had the stigmata and who floated in the air in front of people and she advised princes and kings and bishops when the Spanish Armada came through the Straits of Gibraltar she blessed it they took around the glue and it promptly sank I was going to say in doubt it was defeated in English they got suspicious and then she became deathly ill and she admitted that as a young woman before she was a nun she had sold her soul to the devil in return for these apparent gifts so careful careful right if you like private revelation be careful because you are obliged to be careful by the first commandment otherwise you can be involved in false worship and the violation of the first commandment well you say it is also worth noting that that just because one believes that a revelation is from God one is not thereby dispensed from following legitimate ecclesiastical Authority revelations do not make or dispense from church laws a revelation that did so would be certainly suspect yes now there's a complication there is that the first decision on this is the local bishop and most bishops live in mortal terror that somebody is going to have a private revelation in their diocese because they'll never have a peaceful moment most bishops are praying that the Blessed Mother does not show up in their diocese now the when the bishop has to make a decision a Prudential decision he gets help against advice and he makes the decision and suppose he makes it in favor of the revelation to the couple of those around right now and the identity of the person was an adult is known that is not the final answer okay eventually this has to eventually it will go to Rome unto the congregation of the doctrine of faith there's a very popular private revelation around called the poem of the god man by maria valtorta Cardinal Ratzinger now Pope Benedict called this book a lump of theological absurdities and he had it on the index and when the index was uh done away with he reminded people the next day that the book was still very much under suspicion well says in the use of the poem of the man God is also important to recall that maria valtorta is described in the preface as having spent the last decade of her life in a state similar to catatonic schizophrenia her publishers admit that i think she was a very devout woman with considerable literary ability and I think these started as her meditations but what shows you there are heretical things the palm of the Godman for instance the Blessed Virgin Mary being mad at the human race for the death of Christ please well speaking of Blessed Mother you talk about here about even in the palain book he talks about there's Maria of a grita and Catherine Emmerich who obviously popularized because of the Passion of the Christ st. Elizabeth as well now show now and they talk talking about their reports in their writings of the but the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary very immensely you know there's various 14 years after the death 21 years 13 years and it's point out where he points out they can't all be right can't all be right no and probably the best thing to do is to leave them in in question one of the great visionaries was Saint Francis of Rome Anan in Rome and after she died the sister who took over the community as the superior said Reverend Mother had a very busy imagination something to that back you know these are prayerful people and their meditations begin to take on three dimensions that may not even be mental illness if you read some of the great poets of the human race they're terribly convincing or some of the popular symbolic novels of our time Narnia and things like that uh you know these people aren't presenting them as private revelations but they certainly are convincing that in some domain of their mind these things were happening they're not mentally oh they know they did not happen you say those interested in private revelations would do well to ponder this strange fact to talk about Joan of Arc Joan understood enough to change the history of Europe but she did not understand her own destiny you say many a private revelation or inspiration has saved a life and you talk about a brother Brendon aw brother Brendon is a friar minor was a missionary in China when the Japanese invaded that part of China and they came in one end of the city and they went out the other Prioress and people with them went out the other side because they would kill any foreigners they found lest they testify against them so brother Brendon rent was was with an old friar and they ran up into the hills and they came to a crossroad and they started one way and an old man not a Chinese and biblical clothes was standing there said no go the other way and they turned around and they ran the other way and they heard the machine-gun fire behind them and brother Brendan was absolutely convinced that it was st. Joseph and brother Brendan was as sayed a person as I ever met in my life so this can happen to a person I have talked to people who had extraordinary experiences they're not publicizing them they're not calling the bishop to make a shrine but it was something very very powerful intervention of God in their life and some of these people were unbelievers when it happened now going back to Bernadette this was one I had heard you mentioned before you talked about that when a revelation receives wide notoriety there is likely to be a spate of reports of other visions no less than two hundred apparitions were reported in the cinah t of lords after the experience of Bernadette none of these were ever taken seriously so that is the thing when something does happen that even if that's true many times there are these kind of copycat most people have no idea that there were copycats all over the place at North some of them rather interesting some of them may indeed have had a validity okay some of them were silly the thing about st. Joan that's very interesting Joan of Arc are the basis of seeing the the two Saints and the angel magnificently painted in the Metropolitan Museum of Art dosti on Lapage a marvelous painting he did a terrific job Joan led the armies of France a peasant girl who couldn't ride a horse change the history of Europe change the history of the Catholic Church with France would have become part of England and England left the Catholic Church at the Reformation so we'd have no st. Erasmus Saint John Vianney no Sacred Heart no nothing and yet when John was on trial one of the friendly inquisitors said to her what do your voices tell you she says st. mark would told me do not be afraid of your martyrdom you'll have a great victory and he said what did she mean by your martyr she's what I have suffered already and Joan went into the marketplace thinking she would be free and she wasn't and she did not lose hope the canonisation of Joan of Arc hangs on the thirty seconds when she's there at the pillory and the flames are coming up and she doesn't give up she speaks to Jesus right the pillar even though she misunderstood even though she's missing which is the important point of your book as well we're just out of time so much to talk about in this wonderful book is still small voice father Benedict Groeschel by Ignatius press available through the EWTN religious catalogue check it out check us out next time right here on

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Small Voice, Catholic

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Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2011