Pints With Aquinas - Do We Need Marian Apparitions? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

Many new converts often wonder if they must accept Marian apparitions or what they must believe about them. Some Protestants worry that Catholics can be worshiping Mary with all the apparitions and devotions. Fr. Pine answers the titular question and many more. 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Hello, my name is Fr. Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pines of the Quinas. In this episode I want to ask, do we need Marian apparitions? I asked this question with Fr. Bonaventure recently on a God-spending episode, but I want to ask it here again to examine it at greater length. Because on the one hand, you've got a lot of folks who are inquiring into the faith or joining the faith, and they're concerned to know like, okay,

what is the bread and butter? What is the meat and potatoes? What is the simple formula for which I'm responsible? You know, like lots of doctrines, lots of devotions, lots of people saying lots of things like, do I need to care about this? Because if I don't have to care about this, I feel like I'd like to focus elsewhere.

Okay, so you got those people. But then you got other people who are like, give it all, give it all to me, right? So I wanna know this, I wanna know that, I wanna practice this, I wanna practice that. But then they might be concerned because like how do you explain this to others? Or how do you present this to others?

Because certainly there are folks who look at the Catholic practice of the faith and they're like I thought you guys worship Jesus what's all this like worship of Mary going on so we have a feel for what fits in our own life but we'll want to be able to explain it to our contemporaries so that way they aren't scandalized by our prayer and practice so bring your questions to the table I'll see if I can answer them. Let's ask together whether or not we need Marian apparitions. Okay as you might have suspected for a follower of St. Thomas Aquinas the answer is going to be no and yes. So we are going to both deny and affirm

but in subtle fashion. Okay so the preliminary point before I make the primary point, before I make the secondary point. So the preliminary point is that we need to strike a doctrinal balance. And I don't know that balance is the right word, maybe proportion is a better word. But when describing things Catholic, right, when describing our belief or our doctrine, we do so within the analogy of faith or we enunciate it according to a hierarchy of truths. So when we articulate the faith we try first to identify what's most important or those beliefs on which other beliefs hang or hinge. So St. Thomas, he'll read this little verse from Hebrews 116

which runs like this, for whoever would draw near to God, we want to do that, must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Alright, so that he exists and that he rewards. St. Thomas associates this with the existence of God and his providence. Those are the two most basic things which are set before us who would approach, who would draw near to God. Now in his explication of the Creed, St. Thomas will associate half the articles of the Creed with the existence of God and half the articles of the Creed with the providence of God. But you're thinking like, how?

Well for him, the existence of God is best expressed in our belief in the Trinity, and the providence of God is best expressed in our belief in the Incarnation. So he sees this as mapping to our belief in the Trinity and in the Incarnation. You're like, Father Gregory, I clicked on this video because I was interested in Marian apparitions. What are you talking about? Basically, the two most important things that we believe as Catholics is the triune God and the incarnate Lord, and all of our beliefs hinge on or flow from these two most important beliefs. So St. Thomas will be like, all right, you got 12 articles or 14

articles of the Creed depending on how you break them out or count them. Half of them are associated with the Trinity, half of them are associated with the Incarnation, and our belief in the Blessed Virgin Mary fits within our belief in the incarnation. Alright, so that he was born of a woman born under the law to deliver from the law those who were subject to it, that is a mystery of the life of Christ, and it's a mystery that implicates the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, Our Lady's place is subordinate to the place of Christ. Subordinate to, not unimportant. Subordinate to.

Alright, so in our preaching and our teaching, we aim to be proportionate. So we aim to set forward those things which are most important and then those things which are next most important. So do we always have to like clear our throat? That is to say, explain all of the preliminaries before getting to the primary and the secondary? Not necessarily, because you know sometimes you want to write a book on Marian devotion with Aquinas And you can't summarize the whole faith and the introduction to it So you don't always have to clear your throat, and you don't have to say like everything else first

Sometimes you can just set forward a doctrine But I think it's helpful to kind of hold in your mind and heart the proportion Within the analogy of faith or the art kind of like hierarchy of truths So as we talk about our belief in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Blessed Virgin Mary we do so with this sense of proportion Okay, so fine to pick out certain truths fine to emphasize them And I think Marian devotion is an especially beautiful Catholic thing to emphasize GK Chesterton said that

emphasize, GK Chesterton said that Mariolatry is the badge and boast of every Papist. Obviously, he's being somewhat ironic slash provocative. Okay, so then when it comes to Marian apparitions, the primary point here is Christ. Okay, and you're like, what's the connection? Okay, because when we say, do we need Marian apparitions, we need to be clear on what we mean by need or what we mean by, we need to be clear on what we mean by need or what we mean by necessity because need can be said in many ways. So there's like intrinsic necessity, or absolute necessity. This would be like the type of things that flow from the natures.

So on account of the fact that I'm a human being, I need to eat and drink or I will die in short order within a couple of weeks. And then you got like extrinsic necessity and there are different kinds of extrinsic necessity like this is getting too weird. Alright well you got like necessity of violence or of coercion so if someone else like forces you to do something that's what we're talking about there. But then you've got what St. Thomas calls hypothetical or conditional necessity. That's like if I'm going to do this thing I need to do that thing. And you've got certain means. Thomas calls hypothetical or conditional necessity. That's like, if I'm going to do this thing, I need to do that thing.

And you've got certain means which are indispensable to the end. So if I'm going to achieve the end, then I have to... And then we've got certain means which are just fitting for the end, or even most fitting for the end. So if I'm going to achieve the end well, then I had better... So to be clear, when we're talking about the incarnation, we're not talking about absolute necessity. In order for God to save us, it's not absolutely necessary that our Lord Jesus Christ take human flesh. It's not, because God can save us in whatsoever way He so chooses.

What we're talking about here is a kind of hypothetical or conditional necessity. God wants to save us well, and so he chooses these means. That is to say, the incarnation of his only begotten Son is a way by which to deliver us from sin and death. And it's wild, and it's awesome. But I think that that helps us to understand the question of whether we need Mary in apparitions, because it's against the backdrop of whether or not we need Christ. And the answer is, I mean, it's supremely fitting, but God could have gone about it in another way. Are we super grateful that He went about it in this way? Yes. Alright? Is it super wonderful that He did? Absolutely. Okay? So when St. Thomas talks about the incarnation, he says like, this is a most fitting means, right? It's not absolutely or indispensably such, but it's really darn good. So God can save us in this way or that, but it's most fitting, it's most beautiful, it's most wonderful that He manifest and communicate His salvation through our Incarnate Lord, through the Incarnate Lord. By using means which are closer to our sensibilities, which are nearer and easier and somehow more human for us to recognize and so to respond to.

So this is all super cool, but it gives us a kind of sense for what we need in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Alright, so you might fear at the outset a kind of imbalance in setting this forward or in explaining this to other people, which is fine, that's a principled fear. Or you might fear a kind of like Gnosticism that people go after these Marian apparitions because they afford us the secret key or the hidden knowledge which will then propel us into the heights of spiritual enlightenment. Okay, so, yeah, I wouldn't... we don't need it as a new revelation, okay? So we want to retain a sense of proportion, we're not looking for this as a life hack, as it were, or a shortcut in the spiritual

life, but within an appropriate or orthodox understanding of a Marian apparition, you know, we can use it, right? And we can profit from it, and we can benefit from it, okay? So it's rooted in our understanding of the Marian dogmas, right? So usually when we think about Our Lady's place in the dispensation of revelation and grace, we think about it in terms of Christology, right? So, she's really super like her son in many ways, because like why do we hail her as Mother of God? It's because she's the Mother of God, right? She was given this grace of the Divine Maternity, which is that grace closest to the grace of the Ingaard nation, okay?

And then we also think about her in terms of soteriology, that is to say the grace of the Ingar nation. Okay? And then we also think about her in terms of soteriology, that is to say the study of salvation. Like, it seems that our Lord wants to use her for salvation. Certainly, he took flesh in her womb and St. Augustine, excuse me, St. Louis de Montfort in citing St. Augustine will refer to Our Lady as the mold, the mold in which Christ is cast. And if that's the case, right, at the beginning of this new covenant, so it seems that it will hold, that case right at the beginning of this new covenant so it seems that it will hold that it will be the case throughout this new covenant so if we want to be cast in the mold of the Blessed Virgin Mary so as to become Christ then we got to go before so when

thinking about Marian apparitions we're thinking about them against the backdrop of the necessity that we have you know for the Incarnation or the need that we have for Christ and we're also thinking about it in terms of the Marian teachings that we so love and revere or kind of uphold in our minds and hearts. So we're thinking about it in terms of how Our Lady is like Christ, and we're thinking about it in terms of how Our Lady helps, as it were, in this campaign of salvation. So Marian apparitions then are a help. They're something from which we can profit. They don't like add to public revelation. We refer to them as

private revelation because public revelation ends with the death of the last Apostle. We're not bound to believe them or to incorporate them in our practice, and yet I think there's a kind of risk if we set them aside in the sense that Our Lady, it seems, has appeared in, you know, the 16th and the 19th and the 20th and even the 21st century and she wants to accommodate the Gospel to a contemporary audience for love of us and if we're like, nah, don't need it, I don't know, that just seems kind of dismissive of what is in fact a very generous gift. So it's not like we're missing out on something absolutely necessary or intrinsically necessary, but we might be missing out on something extrinsically necessary, that is to say a most fitting means

for coming to belief and embrace of that most fitting means, which is the Incarnation, which is to say our Lord Jesus Christ who conducts us all the way to the Father. So yeah, it seems like a good thing because it's a gift, right? So there are many miracles associated with these Marian apparitions, there are many sacraments celebrated at the sites of these Marian apparitions, there is much in the way of renewal of the life of faith that flows from these Marian apparitions, and it's for you, right? And it's for now. You can think about it in those terms. It's especially fruitfully, wonderfully adapted to now. So,

in Our Lady we see a kind of commendation of salvation by maternal mediation, okay? So it's not necessary, but it's really good and it's testimony or proof that Our Lady loves you and she loves you in a maternal way and that she wants to accommodate the gospel so that you can recognize it and receive it and profit from it. God wills what he wills, he employs many means including this one so why not avail of ourselves? Why not? Regardless of how much we need this we certainly need something so we may as well lay hold of what God gives. Alright, that's what I hope to share. I pray that it is of some use to you and your spiritual life.

So this is Ponser of the Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel. Push the bell and get sweet email updates when other things come out. Also, if you haven't yet, check out God's Planning. Father Bonaventure and I did a live stream apropos of the theme not too long ago, so you might enjoy that conversation if you enjoy these types of things. And then what else is new? Oh, we've got a God Splendid All-Cummers Retreat. It's the second weekend of June.

So we have a couple of spots left. It's going to be a decent size squad, maybe like 100, 110 people. So let's go. You can check that out if you like. And we also have a men's retreat. It's the weekend of August and that's for like men 21 to 40. The all-comers retreat is folks like 21 to a billion so sign up for those and I look forward to seeing you at the all-comers retreat it's gonna be Father Bonaventure and Father Patrick at the men's retreat. That's what I got.

Alright, know my prayers for you please pray for me and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Pius Oedicuinus.