Wednesday, June 15, 2005
RATZINGER AND VON BALTHASAR
A review by Gary Willis at the New York Review of Books offers this comment on von Balthasar:
Ratzinger is an enthusiastic supporter of the theology of Han Urs von Balthazar, who professed that he took much of his theology from his mystical friend Adrienne von Speyer (1902–1967), who was "frequently visited by the Blessed Virgin (whom she had first seen in 1917)."[5]And throughout the 1970s Ratzinger gave regular summer conferences to a group of Marian devotees in the Black Forest who live by the prophecies the Virgin delivered to four children in Garabandal, Spain, from 1961 to 1964.
Garabandal is an unapproved prophecy. Von Speyer is not even on the list.
Prophecy--approved prophecy--is considered "private revelation" and not part of the deposit of faith. As such, belief in it is optional. Unapproved prophecy is in limbo even so far as the option to believe. It is unsafe to place faith in the unapproved prophecies of any seer. Many of them are subsequently disapproved. There has been an outbreak of visionary events in the past century, many of them subsequently disapproved. Gnosticism relies on just such visionary events. It is the substance of Rosicrucianism. It is antinomian--it rejects established doctrine and the Church hierarchy.
If any vision in question is the work of the Arch Deceiver, it is quite reasonable to expect that it will be close enough to the truth to deceive even the elect. We have been warned that just such deceivers will arise in the last days. It is possible that we are in the last days. The only safety is to stay within Church approved prophecies.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
