Abstract
Chris Maunder has had a 35-year interest in Marian apparitions in modern Europe. His book, Our Lady of the Nations, is a comprehensive overview of a subject which to the secular world is regarded with curious and doubting amusement, but which to devotees of the various apparition cults is a matter of pressing importance.
Some of the places associated with reports of sightings of Mary have become internationally famous. They have become loci of devotion. Fatima, Lourdes and Medjugorje continue to attract thousands of visitors long after the initial events. Their reputations have spread thanks to the developments in modern communication of the last century, from rail travel to the Internet. Other sites have enjoyed a short-lived burst of fame, such as Ballinspittle and the other Irish apparition sites of 1985, only to be relegated to a historical footnote.
The author quotes a claim that perhaps as many as one in ten of the population has seen something which does not belong to the everyday material world. What the seer witnesses appears very real, but the seer knows it cannot be solidly of this world. Of course, few hallucinations, if that is what they are, take the form of visions of Mary. The shape an apparition takes depends on the cultural background of the observer. Visions of Mary come almost exclusively from within the Roman Catholic tradition. It is when stories of what is witnessed enter the public domain and are widely believed, that these visions become significant. That is when reports of local and subjective experiences can cast light on the state of the society in which they occur.
Chris Maunder has researched the apparitions in the context of an era of unprecedented social upheaval in Europe. The visionaries of Fatima had their encounter during the fearful years of the First World War. Other visions are placed in the context of Nazism, Communism, secularism, persecution or austerity.
The book examines the factors common to the many and various accounts of sightings. Women, children and the laity are the visionaries. The book contains a tabulated breakdown of visionaries by age and gender. These are initially grass-roots events. They can occur as ‘epidemics’ with one claim sparking another and then another within the same region. The response of the Roman Catholic Church authorities is always one of caution. Folk faith Mariology sits uncomfortably with the theology of many of the bishops and yet events that stimulate significant renewals of faith cannot be dismissed out of hand. The idea of Mary, as seen as a bringer of consolation and reassurance, is encouraged; as are calls to repentance and renewal: however, the apocalyptic messages that are said to accompany many of the visions, warnings of imminent divine judgement, are seldom directly endorsed. The Church too has to consider whether events of a paranormal nature are of supernatural origin and whether they are divine or diabolic.
The book is an excellent, objective and scholarly examination of a subject which will be of value to both believers and sceptics.