S
Did Mary
appear on the
La Salette is a
mountain near
They saw a bright light which opened to show a Lady sitting inside weeping. She wore white shoes with different colours of roses on them and a gold apron. A white cap with a crown and roses reposed upon her head. The crown rose to a little peak at the front. Her face was pale and she shone like a bright light. The Catholic encyclopaedia says that the sun was shining at the time.
The real Virgin
would not have had white skin for in the New Testament, Mary is a
Jewess. Christians claim that she is
the mother of God for Jesus her son was not only man but was God as well.
The costume is bizarre. The Virgin Mary's dress sense in apparitions was limited to a plain dress with maybe a veil. Sometimes she wore a crown. Never shoes. The La Salette Virgin wore jewellry around the neck - this was never heard of before.
Melanie said
that the apparition said, “If my people do not submit, I shall be forced to
let go the hand of my Son. It is so
strong and heavy, that I can no longer withhold it. For how long a time do I suffer for
you! If I would not have my Son
abandon you, I am compelled to pray to Him without ceasing. As to you, you take no heed of it.”
She is saying
she cannot stop him as if she could stop him.
This is blasphemy. God is his
own boss.
And how could
the Virgin suffer when she is with God?
To see God is to be perfectly happy for it is possessing infinite
goodness and love. She will also see
the outcomes of sin and suffering out of which God brings good so how could
she be so sad?
The apparitions
plainly infer that the Virgin is the real god. They infer that she is better than God for he
cannot even fill her heart with joy.
The Virgin
complained about people breaking the Sabbath day. Next she said that they could do nothing
without using the holy name of Jesus in a rude way. “These are the two things which make the
hand of my Son so heavy”. She said
that the failure of the potatoes of the previous year was a warning but one
which was ignored. That was
silly. If God is so mysterious then
how can you tell if it is a warning or just a way to do some good? The Lady predicted a famine for the region
which actually did happen. The Lady
said that if the people converted “the rocks will change into loads of wheat,
and the potatoes will be self-sown on the lands.” So this Lady knows the non-existent future
so well that she is sure that God will be able to do such miracles! How ludicrous! The miracles are silly as well considering
how God likes to be fairly secretive.
They are really super-miracles.
Believers don’t take her literally here. They take her metaphorically. But should they? No- they only take her that way because the
rocks didn’t turn into wheat and angels didn’t come to sow the potatoes. If
an ordinary person said that I might take her metaphorically but if a being
from Heaven says it I would take it literally. Remember the rule, if it can be literal
then it must be taken literally.
The Lady told
the children to say at least an Our Father and Hail Mary well morning and
evening and more if they had the time.
The real Virgin would have told them they could pray anytime even
while washing themselves in the stream for prayer is a wilful desire for God.
Many say that
the Virgin’s prophecies were fulfilled and that it is difficult to deny
this. “There is no doubt that the
content of the La Salette messages was made known publicly before these
prophecies were fulfilled” (The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary,
page 139). But the prophecies were
understandable considering that the crops went bad the previous year. They could have been good guesses helped
along by good luck. But if the Virgin
promised miracle crops if the people repented then why didn’t this happen
those who did turn back to God? But
with so many apparitions making predictions and many of them being wrong this
is hardly impressive. It is only
natural that some apparitions will get it right. It only means their guesses came true.
The Virgin told
Melanie a secret and Melanie said later that she was permitted to tell it in
1858. Keeping something a secret like
that and then telling it seems silly.
There was no reason for it.
Plainly, Melanie concocted the secret.
The Church believes that the secret Melanie revealed was made up by
her for the secret is silly. That is the Church’s excuse for
believing in the apparitions but not in the secret. We must remember that the
church didn’t want to look foolish by rescinding its decree that the apparitions
were real when Melanie started making outrageous claims about what the Vision
had said. To accept the apparition as
real is to break the law of God given in Deuteronomy 18 that if a prophet
claiming to be inspired by God gets it all right and then makes one blunder
that the prophet is to be rejected entirely as a fraud. The miracle of correct prophecy then must
be attributed to some other source but not God for God never inspires error
or makes mistakes. To accept Melanie’s
account of the apparition then is heretical and sinful. The lady she saw was not the Virgin
Mary. The real Virgin would choose the
right messenger.
The secret
says, “There is no one left worthy of offering a stainless sacrifice to the
Eternal God for the sake of the world”.
This is frankly impossible for some Catholics will always do penance.
The Devil will
be unloosed from Hell in 1864 to chip away at the faith bit by bit. He could do this from Hell so his getting
out is impossibly ridiculous. “People
will be transported from one place to another by these evil spirits”. This is the miracle of teleportation. This harks back to the Middle Ages when
people believed that miracles were all over the place.
The Virgin even
said that the dead will be brought back to life!
If the Devil
hates the Church then he wrote this prophecy in order to make people
suspicious of the Church and accuse it of apostasy so that it develops an
uncontrollable tendency to schism.
Catholics will say it has not but that is not the point for it should
still be doing that. You don’t say
that because a murder turned out to save lives in unexpected ways that the
murder was right.
Melanie
certainly invented her secret for she could not remember it all for she was
not bright and it was very long. If
she made that up it is most likely that she made up the vision too.
La Salette was
recognised by the Catholic Church because a spring appeared and there were
cures. But medicine makes mistakes
today and so it would have been worse in those days so the cures could have
been natural. The fulfilled prophecy
was not sufficient proof.
The pope
granted a plenary indulgence to all who came on pilgrimage to the site of the
apparition.
In the interesting booklet, The Exaltation of the Virgin Mary, by Rev S.G. Poyntz, M.A., B.D. we read, “Clergy of nearby dioceses stated that the vision was an imposture by a lunatic nun named Constance Lamerliere, who had purchased the alleged dress in which the Virgin appeared. The followers of La Salette argued that this was simply the story of a jealous party who were annoyed because their own shrines were doing bad business due to the decrease in pilgrims. This story persisted so much that the said Constance Lamerliere took the matter to a Court of Justice. The Court decided the case against her and threw out the appeal. This vision must be pronounced a fake and a scandal” (page 25). So the civil court decided that the apparition was indeed a hoax and that this woman had indeed pretended to be the apparition. We should believe it rather than the Church court which declared that Mary had appeared. There were more witnesses to the evidence for fraud than witnesses to the vision. And the Church court was prejudiced for there was no real evidence that the visionaries saw Mary apart from a good guess as to her identity and the light surrounding the Lady. Fantasy and excitement can pollute the memory and add in exaggerated elements later. Moreover, the lies and fanaticism and the occasional insanity and hallucinations of Melanie are against the Church judgement that the visions were authentic.
Constance Lamerliere was born of rich parents in Grenoble. We must remember that nobody is likely to point the finger at the member of a wealthy and powerful family without reason. They had the money and power to cover up or retaliate. Why was she accused of pretending to be Mary when other people would have made safer choices? She was the mistress of novices at the New Convent de la Providence which she joined in 1822. She was described as having a powerful imagination and was fond of mystical practices such as trying to hear the voice of God and experience miracles. She had a penchant for shrines of Jesus and Mary and wanted them established everywhere in the convent. She was an outstanding communicator and soon infected the novices with her fanaticism. The superior Madame Chantal took action to counteract this. She was put under surveillance and she hated this so much that she took rest from her labours. She became a recluse who never left her cell except to go to Church. One day she left the convent without permission and anybody knowing that she had gone. She went to several churches and told the priests that if they requested money in her name they would get it for improving their Churches. Of course any priest who took her seriously got nothing. At Marseilles, she tried to set up a congregation of religious devoted to the Holy Family. This lady was certainly capable of doing what she was accused of.
Mc Clure states
that the children called the vision, “The Lady”, rather than giving her any
kind of religious title” (The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary,
page 34). This proves that the
children had doubts about the Lady’s identity and had suspicions even though
the lady spoke of Jesus as her son! Maximin said he believed it was Our Lady
but added that he never said it was Our Lady.
Melanie said
that when she first saw the light the apparition was inside and sitting down
in it and Maximin said, “Keep your stick; if it does anything I will give it
a good knock”. Obviously he was not
sure if it was a woman so Melanie told a little lie for they had no idea what
if anything was inside the light. The
vision occurred in the sunny afternoon so the light could have been a
reflection on the golden apron. Or
perhaps the Lady had not come in the light at all but they in their
bewilderment they thought she had.
Perhaps there was somebody shining the sun from a mirror unto the lady
to make her seem bright and the children said they found her hard to look at
for she dazzled them. That is why we
cannot believe this was the Virgin Mary.
In other apparitions, the vision is encased in light but nobody is
dazzled. The Catholic objection to the
apparition being Constance Lamerliere is that this lady was in her fifties
and heavy. But with pale makeup she would
have looked younger and she was wearing robes that could have made her look
slimmer. Light reflecting from bright
clothes will also make a person look younger. However The Sceptical Occultist indicates that the lady wasn’t very youthful
when Melanie said she was a mad mother who would kill her children. Maximin indicated the same thing when he
said the lady was beaten by her son.
These clues have been ignored by researchers as to the identity of the
apparition. Melanie must have been
terrified of the apparition which makes it hard to believe her account of
what the lady did and said. It is more
likely that she got Maximin to run with her when she and he saw it and later
they started embellishing what had happened.
After all, an apparition that might kill her children would kill
Maximin and Melanie as well.
The Lady wore a
lot of shiny stuff so that could be why she dazzled the children. The children could not look at her for very
long they said for that reason. If she
was that bright they would not have been able to look at her at all. If she was brighter at times, the
reflection of the sun could have been the reason. The children had been asleep before they
saw the light and tiredness could account for their imagining lights and/or
mistakenly mixing what is real with imagination (The Evidence for Visions
of the Virgin Mary, page 30).
Melanie had
problems understanding the vision which was talking in French. When she asked Maximin to help her
understand the vision the Lady realised she should have been talking in the
local dialect to make them understand and this was what she did (page 120, The
Sceptical Occultist). The real
Virgin would have known not to talk in French. The Lady could not even read minds so she
was not a supernatural being.
After the Lady
disappeared Maximin tried to grab the remaining brightness which shows how
easily fooled he would have been. The
way the Lady disappeared – the head vanishing first, then the abdomen and
then the feet suggest that she climbed up into something - a tree? With a light shining on her mistakes could
have been made by the witnesses.
Perhaps she just jumped behind a stone or something and the children
thought the light was her abdomen and then assumed that her feet were the
last to vanish.
The way the
lady disappeared is so comical that it is unworthy of the Virgin Mary to
vanish like that. It is grotesque for
the head to vanish first and then the middle and leaving only the feet left
to disappear!
Then Maximin
said, “Perhaps it is a great saint”.
After they had claimed to have listened to the Lady saying she was the
mother of Christ! They did not know
who she was at all! They were not even
sure if she was a saint! This surely
suggests that there was a lot of exaggeration in their original story though
they stuck to the public version of it and that Our Lady of La Salette was
none other than poor mad Sister Constance Lamerliere in fancy dress! Nobody denies that after the apparition the
children did embellish their story but it is the original story that the
Church believes.
The children came down the hill and Melanie said she was sure the Lady was a mad woman who would kill her children but she was less sure because she rose up into the air. Maximin said he would have thought that she was a woman beaten by her son and who was wandering about. This tells us that the woman was thought to be mad and evil and had bruises and was older than Mary looked in her reported apparitions. This shows that the children lied about the holiness of the vision lady. They thought at first the vision was a mad bad woman and later on, probably as a result of priestly influence, changed their tale to make it appear that they had encountered the Virgin Mary.
Maximin only
disclosed the apparition story when he got
back to his employer who wanted to know why he was late. Was the story made up as an excuse? Remember they were stupid children. The children were emotionally isolated
(page 121, The Sceptical Occultist) and they might have convinced
themselves that they saw someone who cared about them. Maximin’s employer questioned him severely
which would have proven to the children that they needed to stick to the same
story. The Sceptical Occultist
says that the vision may be supernatural because it fits patterns from
previous apparitions that the children never knew about. But the clothes of the Virgin were
completely different from her usual fashion.
She goes walking with the visionaries instead of standing in one place
to be admired. She tells the children
things they must have already known.
The spring that appeared has nothing to do with the springs tradition
for it was already there (page 120, The Sceptical Occultist). The request for prayers and the making of
threats would have been thought of anyway without any knowledge of previous
apparitions. And so we must disagree
with The Sceptical Occultist.
Psychologists
have said that Maximin hallucinated the vision to come to terms with his
horrible and lonely past that triggered the same in Melanie whose mind saw what
Maximin was describing to her (page 120-121, The Sceptical Occultist). It is possible that Melanie did not see
what he saw but saw something in her mind and later Maximin told her of his
experience and she subconsciously manipulated her imagination and memory so
that she thought she had experienced exactly what he experienced. It was false memory and there is no
evidence that it was not. It is
certain that with eccentric Melanie, false memory would have been the least
of her mental afflictions.
It was unfair for the Virgin to expect two children who had suffered enough to suffer the sneers and scorn of the neighbours by telling them they saw a Lady from Heaven with a frightening message. It would have been different if it could have been discreetly investigated and verified first. The Devil, if he exists, would be a plausible explanation. The Lady never said that she should be listened to not because of the threats but because she was right. The Lady advocated false spirituality based on fear and selfishness.
FROM A Pilgrimage to La Salette: Or, a Critical Examination of all the Facts Connected with the Alleged Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Two Children on the Mountain of La Salette, On Sep. 19, 1846, James Spencer Northcote, Burns and Lambert, Bristol, 1852
This work claims that the apparition is inexplicable and so it can be believed that it is miraculous.
The preface dismisses those who argue "the fact that an alleged event is of a supernatural character, is at once conclusive evidence against its existence." Their view is that "all such narratives are necessarily false, because we are satisfied on a priori grounds that they could not possibly be true." Another way this can be put is as follows. The unbelievers are credulous or gullible. They believe silly natural explanations. It is not the believers in well-evidenced miracles who are gullible. "Truly the credulity of the incredulous is most astonishing!" (page 40).
The Church itself agrees with their reasoning when it suits it. For example, if a Hindu guru rose from the dead like Jesus the Church would say that it is an illusion or fraud. Also, most miracle stories are absurd - eg seeing visions of fairies was a big thing in the past and the Church laughs at them. It can't see any reason why even the Devil would get involved.
What the Catholic author does not tell us is that good witnesses stated that they saw a vision of Jesus having sex with a man that the Church would say that even if it is a miracle it is a satanic one and that the revelation is false.
Page 16, says the children admitted to the lady that they did not say their prayers well. She told them, "Take care to say your prayers, my children, every night and morning. When you can do nothing else, say only a Pater and an Ave Maria; but when you have time, say more." This was spoken to shepherd children.
The apparition repeated what she had to say (page 17).
Page 22 points out how "the personage who was supposed to have appeared to them had not required them to communicate it to the ecclesiastical authorities; there was no obligation, therefore, on the part of the bishop to give any judgment at all."
Page 23, gives an example of how the children were able to tell the same story all the time about the lady. "In forwarding the depositions to the attorney-general, which was done on the following day, the examining magistrate enclosed a private note, saying that the children had given their evidence very much as if they were reciting a lesson; but he added, "this is not to be wondered at; for they have repeated it so often, and to such a number of persons, that they have naturally acquired this habit".
Page 28 discusses how the children were urged by the bishop to write down the secrets that the lady told them so that the letters could be forwarded to the pope.
Page 34, states that while speaking to the children, the Virgin goes, "I have given you six days to labour in, I have reserved the seventh to myself". She speaks as if she had been the author of this commandment. God was the author. The book states that this manner of speaking was used in the Bible too. An angel told Abraham, "I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only-begotten son for my sake". So the angel is not God and then talks as if he is.
Page 35 has the honesty to admit that the not all the prophecies of the Virgin were fulfilled. page 36 states that the prophecies that the gapes will fail and the nuts, the famine will come, and the plague that ravages children will be inflicted did not come to pass. However the vines did fail in 1850. The other prophecies did not take place. Page 37 states that in the Bible God threatened Nineveh absolutely and unconditionally through the mouth of Jonah the prophet. The threats did not take place for Nineveh converted. The lady however made her prophecies conditional. Not all the bad things would happen if the people lived a bit better. she said none of them would take place at all if the ;people converted properly and with enthusiasm.
Page 42 deals with the problem of the lady beginning her discourse in French and she had to change to the local patois because she noticed they were failing to understand her. It says the problem is how the children could remember the part of the discourse they couldn't understand. The second is how Mary could fail to communicate. The book sees no problem with the first because the children had good memories as the vision had made such an impression on them. Melanie claimed she was able to remember what the vision said through repeating it over and over gain to herself (page 44). The second is that if the children had invented the story they would not have invented such a "clumsy and improbable a feature." This is the trick you constantly see when religion attempts to verify that apparitions happen. It twists evidence against the miracle into evidence for it.
The book says that the Virgin using French and then the patio in order that the children would understand her does not undermine the apparition story because they narrated what she said in perfect French though they had prior to the apparition being ignorant of it (page 43).
The witnesses outstanding memory of what he lady said does not agree with page 47 where we read that they "had been brought up in the grossest ignorance, both secular and religious." Of Melanie page16 we read, "her memory and intellectual capabilities were so feeble that, even at the age of sixteen, after having been taught to repeat twice very death for a twelvemonth the acts of faith, hope and charity, she could not be trusted to recite them correctly by herself". Of Maximin we read, "he, too, was of poor natural abilities, and grossly ignorant at the time of the apparition. His father testifies that it was a work of three or four years to teach him the Our Father and Hail Mary" (page 48).
Page 49 claims they had not the intelligence or the wit to invent the story of the apparition and the messages. Later it would emerge that Melanie would reveal the Virgin's secret. The secret was absurd and the Church didn't accept it as true. But it proves she could invent things. The secret is long but she could recite it easily. This refutes the Church's claim that Melanie though too stupid to remember anything was miraculously aided by the Virgin to remember what she told her.
Page 55 shows that Maximin was able to answer a priest on Catholic doctrine. And Melanie when asked if the devil could carry Jesus said he could for Jesus wasn't glorified then. This is a very theologically advanced answer. Melanie became a teacher of poor children (page 66). This does not fit the allegation by the Church that the children were stupid. Evidently, the Church engineered a false perception of the children that made them almost retards. That way it was able to make it appear that they were too dumb to invent such a good apparition story.
It was part of a church scheme to make out that the children's story and their memory of what the lady told them was miraculous!
The stream on the mountain was intermittent and has flowed steadily since the night of the apparition. This stream is considered to be holy water because of the Virgin's apparition. Its steady flowing is thought to be a miracle. It could be coincidence.
It was only assumed that the stream permanently flowed from that time on.
The La Salette vision is just a hoax. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Even if the children's testimony were foolproof we would still be entitled to assume that we don't have full information and that some of that information may give a different understanding and explanation. Many waterproof testimonies are waterproof not because they are entirely true but because contrary evidence has been lost or forgotten or is waiting to be found. The apparition can be dismissed as evil for it asks us to defy the fact that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence simply by seeking our belief in it and in its utterances. To attack that principle is to attack reason and evidence and good sense and therefore human welfare. If we start messing around with the methodology of evidence we mess people around.
A Pilgrimage to La Salette: Or, a Critical Examination of all the Facts Connected with the Alleged Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Two Children on the Mountain of La Salette, On Sep. 19, 1846, James Spencer Northcote, Burns and Lambert, Bristol, 1852
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