The Church: Where Is It? – Chapter 1

Hardly had the manifestations begun to attract attention in Europe, than the clergy commenced their outcry that their traditional enemy had reappeared under another name, and “divine miracles” also began to be heard of in isolated instances. First they were confined to humble individuals, some of whom claimed to have them produced through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, saints and angels; others — according to the clergy — began to suffer from obsession and possession; for the Devil must have his share of fame as well as the Deity. Finding that, notwithstanding the warning, the independent, or so-called spiritual phenomena went on increasing and multiplying, and that these manifestations threatened to upset the carefully-constructed dogmas of the Church, the world was suddenly startled by extraordinary intelligence. In 1864, a whole community became possessed of the Devil. Morzine, and the awful stories of its demoniacs; Valleyres, and the narratives of its well-authenticated exhibitions of sorcery; and those of the Presbytere de Cideville curdled the blood in Catholic veins.

Strange to say, the question has been asked over and over again,

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why the “divine” miracles and most of the obsessions are so strictly confined to Roman Catholic dioceses and countries? Why is it that since the Reformation there has been scarcely one single divine “miracle” in a Protestant land? Of course, the answer we must expect from Catholics is, that the latter are peopled by heretics, and abandoned by God. Then why are there no more Church-miracles in Russia, a country whose religion differs from the Roman Catholic faith but in external forms of rites, its fundamental dogmas being identically the same, except as to the emanation of the Holy Ghost?

Russia has her accepted saints and thaumaturgical relics, and miracle-working images. The St. Mitrophaniy of Voroneg is an authenticated miracle-worker, but his miracles are limited to healing; and though hundreds upon hundreds have been healed through faith, and though the old cathedral is full of magnetic effluvia, and whole generations will go on believing in his power, and some persons will always be healed, still no such miracles are heard of in Russia as the Madonna-walking, and Madonna letter-writing, and statue-talking of Catholic countries. Why is this so? Simply because the emperors have strictly forbidden that sort of thing. The Czar, Peter the Great, stopped every spurious “divine” miracle with one frown of his mighty brow. He declared he would have no false miracles played by the holy icones (images of saints), and they disappeared forever.

There are cases on record of isolated and independent phenomena exhibited by certain images in the last century; the latest was the bleeding of the cheek of an image of the Virgin, when a soldier of Napoleon cut her face in two. This miracle, alleged to have happened in 1812, in the days of the invasion by the “grand army,” was the final farewell.

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But since then, although the three successive emperors have been pious men, their will has been respected, and the images and saints have remained quiet, and hardly been spoken of except as connected with religious worship. In Poland, a land of furious ultramontanism, there were, at different times, desperate attempts at miracle-doing. They died at birth, however, for the argus-eyed police were there; a Catholic miracle in Poland, made public by the priests, generally meaning political revolution, bloodshed, and war.

Is it then, not permissible to at least suspect that if, in one country divine miracles may be arrested by civil and military law, and in another they never occur, we must search for the explanation of the two facts in some natural cause, instead of attributing them to either god or devil? In our opinion — if it is worth anything — the whole secret may be accounted for as follows. In Russia, the clergy know better than to bewilder their parishes, whose piety is sincere and faith strong without miracles; they know that nothing is better calculated than the latter to sow seeds of distrust, doubt, and finally of skepticism which leads directly to atheism. Moreover the climate is less propitious, and the magnetism of the average population too positive, too healthy, to call forth independent phenomena; and fraud would not answer. On the other hand, neither in Protestant Germany, nor England, nor yet in America, since the days of the Reformation, has the clergy had access to any of the Vatican secret libraries. Hence they are all but poor hands at the magic of Albertus Magnus.

Moe

Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.