Are all Marian apparitions legitimate?

I believe in the authenticity of some Marian apparitions — I've been a follower of Lourdes since I was a youngster, and that was a long time ago — but suspect some more recent apparitions aren't legitimate. I'm particularly concerned about an apparition which is occurring in a city close to us. What should my attitude be?

You're right to be cautious. That's the attitude of the Church, which knows that, historically, most purported apparitions — whether of Mary, Jesus, an angel, or one of the saints — have been spurious.

A few months ago a woman thought she saw the face of a missing child in the shadows which played across a billboard. When this news hit the media, the street on which the billboard was situated was packed with cars several nights running. All the curious were out. The police had considerable trouble keeping traffic moving. A few people claimed to see what the woman saw. Most saw only wrinkled billboard paper with shadows cast by streetlights.

Was the image really there? We didn't trek to the billboard to verify firsthand, but we were confident it was a case of wishful thinking. And so it was. In a few days the commotion died down, and that was the end of the episode.

That apparition didn't concern any heavenly being, and the woman didn't claim to receive any message from the missing girl. She just thought she saw the girl's face, much as we see animals and buildings when we lie on our backs in a field and watch billowy clouds pass by.

If this kind of thing, this seeing images where there are none, can happen in a non-religious context, think what can happen in a religious context in which emotions are high.

This woman may have had a longstanding tendency to look for signs and wonders in all sorts of matters. She may have been on the lookout for clues "from the beyond." Such clues exist, of course, in legitimate apparitions, but there can develop, even within otherwise solid Catholics, an unhealthy desire to see God "prove" himself or to confirm our worst suspicions about the state of the world.

Our suspicions may be entirely right — things may be every bit as bad as we suspect — but we shouldn't conclude, based on that sad fact, that God will vouchsafe us some special sign. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. Throughout most of history, when things have been as bad as they are today (and they have been every bit as bad in the past; only those who don't know the past think all things are worse now than ever before), God has not given any miraculous sign, at least not one given to a seer for eventual public consumption.

Yet we also know, if we look at something like Lourdes scientifically, that something is going on. The kinds of things that happen at Lourdes (referring here to the healings) have no credible explanation other than the miraculous. These miraculous events give credence to the claim that Mary appeared. True, they don't prove she did, but the weight of the evidence, we think, moves in that direction.

Had she ever appeared before Lourdes? The hard evidence suggests she had. For example, scientists can examine the cloth of Guadalupe, where Mary is said to have appeared four and a half centuries ago, and can see that even its continued existence — it's only plant fiber and should have decayed in a few years — suggests supernatural intervention and thus the legitimacy of the vision.

In the Middle Ages and even before there were reports of saints appearing, but the authenticity of most of those very early apparitions, as with so many since, relies, as a rule, exclusively on the credibility of the seer, something not easy to judge at a millenium's remove.

Anyway, it comes down to this, in our opinion: Apparitions have occurred, and they are nothing new with our times. They didn't start in modern times. Since they have occurred in the past, they may be occurring now. There is no need to conclude that apparitions stopped, say, in 1858 at Lourdes.

But we need to approach each purported apparition with caution. We must always be ready to abandon a purported apparition if the Church rules against it or if there's anything fishy about it. After all, even authentic apparitions are merely private revelations.

No private revelation is binding in conscience on anyone except the person to whom it is given. If your neighbor has a real apparition, and if he's convinced it's authentic and ultimately from God, then in conscience he's bound to follow it — but you aren't, even if you think the apparition is real.

You can be a perfectly good Catholic and pay no attention at all even to apparitions which really occurred. If you don't believe in them, or if you do not believe in them but don't pay attention to them, you aren't guilty of any sin.

You are bound to believe and follow all general revelation, but general revelation ended with the death of the last apostle, commonly believed to be John the Evangelist, who died near the year 100. This general revelation is protected and interpreted by the magisterium of the Church.