Seeing Mary. (Books).

Roy Abraham Varqhese

God-Sent: A History of the Accredited Apparitions of Mary

Crossroad, 2000. $39.95 (cloth).

My seven-year-old daughter and I were recently watching a documentary on attempts to authenticate the Marian apparitions of Nancy Fowler (Conyers, GA) by scientific means. As we watched the scientists hook wires to Fowler's scalp, Lucy asked, "Why don't they just let her believe what she says?" I think Lucy's question has more to do with apologetics than science, and that she noticed a particularly modern anxiety about rationality and physical evidence in religious tradition.

God-Sent is a book for the general reader looking for a well-written introduction to and catalogue of Marian apparitions. More devotional than scholarly, God-Sent attempts to win over believers to the cause of Marian piety: "And those who seek solace in New Age gurus and high-tech soothsayers will be better served if they turn to Mary of the Magnificat, who was once God-chosen and is now Godsent," (1). Toward this end, Varghese combines traditional devotional discourse with brief forays into history, theology, and the philosophy of religion. Content neither with direct testimony nor with scholarly analysis, God-Sent attempts to combine the two, alternating rhetorically between doubt and acceptance, outsider and insider. The result is a book that will interest general readers and scholars alike, as its fly-leaf promises, although possibly for unexpected reasons. The interesting hybrid of genres in God-Sent represents what we could call a "postmodern piety" of church-approved apparitions, though its anxiety abo ut authenticity is actually modern.

Readers familiar with William Christian's Visionaries (University of California, 1996), David Blackbourn's Marpingen (Knopf, 1994), or Sandra Zimdars-Schwartz's Encountering Mary (Princeton, 1991) will not find comparable scholarship in Varghese's book. Of these three important recent studies, Varghese cites only Blackbourn, depending heavily on his historical introduction to modern apparitions. God-Sent does not attempt to contribute to contemporary research on the history or cultural context of apparitions. Its main purpose, despite forays into history and philosophy of religion, is apologetic. The defense of Church documentation and approval, along with the polemics against philosophical skepticism, reveal more about Varghese's motivation than what he calls the "noumena" and "phenomena" of Marian apparitions.

Varghese begins by defining "apparition" and surveying the veneration of Mary in the context of human history. His task here is to demonstrate the continuity of Marian traditions from the dawn of Christianity to the present. He also attempts to argue for their uniqueness: "Although there have been claims of appearances of angels in the history of religions outside of Christianity (Islam, Mormonism), report of a human person sent by God appearing across history with a message for the world is quite simply unique to Marian apparitions. Neither Hinduism nor any of the other world religions has any tradition or even concept of such a phenomenon." (2) In a book that makes a good-faith effort to describe and promote Marian apparitions, such erroneous and grandiose claims are regrettable.

Along with frequent detours to questions of evidence, Varghese's first section, which he calls "Montage," skillfully summarizes early Christian doctrine and devotion to Mary, including quotations from Church fathers and the typological traditions of Mary as a New Eve and the Ark of the Covenant. The book's second part, "Visage," is a series of color plates of images associated with the apparitions, including icons, statues, postcards of churches, and photographs depicting miraculous events, such as a glowing image of Our Lady of Zeitun, Egypt and the bloody statues and Eucharistic host in Naju, South Korea. The book's longest section is "Collage," which collects thirty-four accounts of Marian apparitions under three headings (in ascending order of theological and documentary richness): "Transcendent Tableaux," "Bolts from the Blue," and "Comprehensive Catechesis." This survey derives mostly from devotional sources, often quoting at length. Unfortunately, Varghese's citations of these sources are usually incom plete or missing entirely, placing a roadblock before anyone who would use his book to pursue further reading about specific apparitions. Still, it is an impressive survey, including the nationally televised bleeding statue in Akita, Japan (1973-81), an Arabic-speaking Virgin who exudes pure olive oil in Damascus (1982-90), and "frozen" visionaries in Rwanda who withstand knife pricks and candle flames without flinching (1981-89). Along with these are the more familiar apparitions at Guadalupe, La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje, with their reports of spinning suns, child visionaries, and most consistent of all, the messages calling for renewed devotion to the Eucharist, Rosary recitation, and observance of Church teachings.

But Varghese rarely supplies even the most minimal historical and cultural context. One wonders, for instance, what role Portuguese colonialism played in the apparitions of sixteenth-century Vailankanni, India, or seventeenth-century Sao Paolo, Brazil. As such, his survey is no different from the devotional sources he cites, except for its apparent scholarly ambitions. The closest counterpart to Varghese's survey is thus the genre of hagiographic anthologies, or lives of the saints.

God-Sent is neither a tract nor a coffee-table book, though its theological purpose and rich illustrations point in both directions. A more accurate category would be the emerging type of religious book that might be called Religion for the Educated--neither scholarly nor simply devotional, these books appear in growing numbers on the shelves of stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble. They offer what Paul Ricoeur calls a "second naivete," a return to religious conviction after a period of rationalistic disenchantment. But unlike the best books of this kind (Jack Miles's God: A Biography, for instance), God-Sent never escapes the grip of the modern polemic between faith and rationality, a puzzle already fully theorized in the nineteenth century (by Kierkegaard, for example): "Despite the explosion of gigantic databanks and the daily avalanche of facts and figures, the modern era is characterized by confusion about the most basic questions of life" (41). And yet, argues Varghese, "Right before our eyes we see a phenomenon that resists any natural explanation while giving us the very truths and graces that we seek with all our hearts. So before we speculate about the so-called chariots of the gods (Erich Von Daniken), let's consider the tilma of Guadalupe; and before we puzzle over the X-Files let's read the M-Files" (41).

At best, God-Sent offers a kind of encyclopedia of apparitions, and it will give general readers and even researchers useful introductory information. Like the devotional writings it most resembles, Varghese's book avoids historical and documentary analysis, seeking instead to edify by making the apparitions seem as vivid and present as possible. While it may fulfill its goal of persuading general readers to consider the authenticity of Marian apparitions, God-Sent offers little to historians other than a postmodern reworking of the modern anxieties about religion and rationality.

Brian Britt is Associate Professor and Director of Religious Studies in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Tech. In addition to articles in biblical and religious studies journals, his work includes a book, Walter Benjamin and the Bible, and a second book manuscript, "Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text."