APOLOGIA PRO MARIA VALTORTA

by Fr. Kevin Robinson 1999 (updated and corrected, Sept 2012) www.sspx.org http://valtorta.alphalink.com.au Bishop Roman Danylak in Rome for all the approved English translations. The canonical approval to publish, given by Pope Pius XII has not been seriously challenged. I received a letter from Cardinal Gagnon in Rome (Jan 3, 1992) assuring me that many good people are benefiting from Valtorta's works, but that Cardinal Ratzinger's office has only the negative side of the story. He suggested that more people write to Cardinal Ratzinger to request a clarification. Given the genuine approval, widespread growth, and immense spiritual fruit of The Poem of the Man-God it would be rash to deny refuse or fight against this great gift of God (see Gamaliel's advice, Acts 5:38 9). Let us not forget that even the works of St. Thomas Aquinas were at first condemned, as were the person of St. Athanasius and the writings of Saint Faustina Kowalska. Truth will find its way in the end, and the judgement of Pope Pius XII will be clearly vindicated. In 1978 an anthology was published in Portuguese with the Imprimatur of the Archbishop of Belem, Brazil. In India seven bishops have sent warm letters of congratulations to the publisher of the Malayan translation. One of these bishops gave his Imprimatur in 1993. Don't forget, the approval of Pope Pius XII was more than an
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EXTERNAL SUPPORT OF AUTHORITY Many conservative and traditional Catholics have been misled by an article circulating since 1992, referring to Cardinal Ratzinger's letter of 1985 and a summary of the seven "reasons for condemnation of The Poem of the Man God in 1960. There is a good analysis of this in a new book Fireworks (Kolbe Publications Sherbrooke, Canada, 1996, pp. 78 9, 87 107). It points out (p. 105) that Father Giraudo of the Holy Office in early 1962 reversed the previous decision of that Office to place The Poem on the Index of Forbidden Books. Since then acceptance of The Poem has spread widely with imprimatur granted by

Imprimatur (permission to publish). It was an instruction to publish, given at the Vatican before official witnesses on February 26, 1948. INTERNAL VALUE OF THE WORK Now for the intrinsic arguments. Just about all the objections to The Poem involve taking quotes somehow out of context. I distinguish three ways to take a text out of context and thus distort its meaning. First there is verbal or literal context. The Bible has these words: There is no God" (Ps. 52), and "Christ died in vain (Gal. 2:21). No one can say that the Bible says (affirms) these statements, because in context we have: "The fool says in his heart, there is no God; and "If justice comes by the law, then Christ died in vain". Yet the verbal context could also be made clear somewhere else, e.g. St. Paul saying "I would wish to be anathema from Christ, in Rom 9:3, can only be understood rightly in the light of verses 38/9 of the previous chapter, and the rest of Chapters 9, 10 and 11. Likewise with Our Lord's words about cutting off a hand or plucking out an eye (Matt. 5:29 30) in a true verbal context we must understand the literary expression of hyperbole. It would be wrong to take it too literally. In the same way, Our Lord has given Maria Valtorta some surprising expressions. Without putting these into context, one could

raise an eyebrow every few hundred pages! One example might be Christ speaking to the pagan Romans about the human soul. He calls it a spark of the divinity, yet if you keep reading it is made clear that He is not speaking literally, for He tells us that the soul is created, separate from God yet made in His image and likeness. The spark of the divinity is an allegory, an image that better expresses our understanding. Second is the cultural and temporal context. It comes as a surprise for some to realise that Christ our Saviour was truly human, and with other characters of the Gospel, was of quite a different cultural stock (from ourselves). Jewish first century styles and customs greatly differ from Western twentieth century ones. Even today, what is normal and proper in Palestine or Italy might be considered strange in America or England. In these latter countries we know it is not proper for men to kiss each other unless they are of close family, or they are enthusiastic U.K. soccer players scoring a goal. Yet in the East it is entirely proper and even expected. Sometimes they even may kiss on the lips as a sign of special affection without any unnatural or sexual connotation. Recall Our Lord at the house of Simon the Pharisee rebuking him for not giving the customary kiss (Luke 7:45). It would be calumny in trying to impute evil motives in the chaste, loving and manly kisses revealed in The Poem. No one who has read it in context

entertains any suspicion on this score, even if they are surprised. Thirdly, the most important context is the doctrinal or faith context. This is the norm for interpreting Sacred Scripture consistent with the unanimous view of the early Fathers or the analogy of faith. i.e. we must always interpret in conformity with the Magisterium of the Church. The unsigned writer in the Vatican newspaper in 1960 hinted at an error in Valtorta's account of the sin of Eve. Fr. Roschini O.S.M. exposes the falsity of this charge in his book The Virgin Mary in the Writings of Maria Valtorta (Kolbe., Sherbrooke, Canada. 1986, pp. 276 9). He points out that The Poem teaches precisely what St. Thomas taught; that the first sin was a complex one involving pride, disobedience, gluttony and finally lust ('fuerunt plures deformitates " Summa 1 li 9.82. a.2, ad 1). He goes on to quote 10 saints and numerous other theologians in support of Valtorta! This is context. With Valtorta, as with the canonical Scriptures, there are difficulties that are easily resolved by distinction from Thomistic philosophy such as: general vs. specific, strictly vs. broadly, properly vs. allegorically, in fieri vs. in facto esse, ad esse vs. ad melior esse, simpliciter vs. quodammodo. These distinctions are usually not needed for the simple faithful as the context gives them the truth without danger.

The Most Quoted Error It has been described as blasphemous that Our Lady could say what is recorded in pages 37-42 of The Poem. There the Blessed Virgin is three years old, talking with her parents. She expresses her great desire to see the Saviour, Who She knows will come for sinners. She asks a logical question: can I be more saved and loved by Christ if I become a big sinner? The question shows that even with Her infused knowledge, Mary was ignorant of the great gift of Her Immaculate Conception which St. Joachim then explains to Her with a beautiful comparison. There is no dispute in Catholic theology about Mary's Immaculate Conception (since 1854) but there is a lawful and traditional disagreement about the extent of Her infused knowledge. On these disputed questions of theology, no one has the right to call the other opinion blasphemous. Nor should Our Lady's statement be taken out of context to condemn the whole work. Thus you have the answer to the main objections. The writings of Maria Valtorta are in no way opposed to the Catholic faith or morals, they were never put on the Index of Forbidden Books for this reason, and they continue to edify the Church resulting in many conversions and vocations. Valtorta's writings were specially given by Christ Our Lord as a gift to His priests, to support the work of His Vicar St Pius X to combat Modernism (see The Poem. vol. 5, pp
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946), and to reveal the truth of the Gospel in a special way. They fill in the gaps. They put you in the picture. They amplify the sacred text, e.g. the Passion may be five pages in your Gospel, it is 100 pages in The Poem. The popularity of these books has spread widely. If The Poem at times seems sentimental, it is really the remedy of sentimentalism in matters of faith. It is no more sensual than the works of St. Ignatius. who encourages the use of all five senses, plus imagination, in his Spiritual Exercises'. The Biblical book Canticle of Canticles could be charged with the same falsehood by the spiritually immature. Valtorta always leads from the senses to the spiritual, the sublime and the supernatural. It is a masterpiece of sacred literature, unlike anything ever written. In some ways it is like being in the first seminary, trained by the Master Himself. A professor and sculptor friend of Maria Valtorta wrote in 1965: "(her works) have completely transformed my inner life. The knowledge of Christ has become so total as to make the Gospels clear to me and make me live them in everyday life better (Lorenzo Ferri). All those among our parishioners who have read Valtorta say the same thing. May God give us the grace to see His truth and bless these works,

especially the great work of spreading His truth and love on earth. With Pius XII I say: "He who reads will understand oo0oo
N.B. Remember that her major work on the Life of Christ, THE POEM OF THE MAN GOD, was condemned by the Holy Office in Rome mistakenly ONLY for the same reasons and the same time frame (2 years) as was the Saint Padre Pio condemned thirty years previously. Remember also that the solidly traditional and anti Modernist Society of St. Pius X has trained a good number of its priests with the direct help of Maria Valtorta; i.e. all those at her first seminary of Econe until 1983 by the first Spiritual Director Fr. Barrielle; then in the USA from 1984 until he left in 2003 by the Rector of its seminary, Bishop Richard Williamson, a renowned biblical scholar and theologian. The Pope on Sept 29, 2012 will beatify the only Biblical Scholar of the twentieth century, Fr. Gabriel Allegra. His latter years were spent reading, studying and promoting the Poem. Holy Cross Seminary in Goulburn, Australia has the Latin works of Fr. Gabriel Roschini, a famous Mariologist who also promoted Valtorta until his death in 1976, considering her writings greater than anything he has ever read on Our Blessed Lady. He wrote over 125 totally orthodox books! St. Pius X granted an Apostolic Blessing for those who read True Devotion. One day (I pray) a traditional pope will grant a similar spiritual reward for reading Maria Valtorta. When you have read the Poem, read also the Notebooks.

Traditional Catholic Poem Research Document http://gloria.tv/?media=329837 A Response to Father John Flader on Maria Valtorta By Father Kevin Robinson Original Article: CatholicWeekly.com.au/article.php?classID

Dear Fr. Flader, Please accept to read another point of view regarding the Poem of the Man-God by Maria Valtorta. 1. As to the Vatican mistake of placing the first edition on the Index, this was corrected when the second edition was presented to the Holy Office in 1962. Then Pope Paul placed the whole set into his seminarians library. Pope Benedict has allowed the work to be published according to Bishop Roman Danylak, who gave the English edition his full imprimatur. From his website: Ecclesiastical Approbations In 1947, Fr. Migliorini, OSM, together with Valtorta's future theological censor, Fr. Conrad Berti, OSM, his confrere in the Servites of Mary, succeeded in having the first complete Italian typescript of The Poem of the Man-God submitted to the then reigning Pope Pius XII, for his evaluation. After personally reading the Work and acquainting himself with Valtorta's Visions and Dictations, Pius XII granted a special audience to both Fathers Migliorini and Berti and their Prior, Father Andrew M. Cecchin, OSM, on February 26, 1948. At that audience, he directed them to publish the Work without omitting anything, not even the explicit assertions reporting "Visions" and "Dictations": Publish this work as it is. There is no need to give an opinion on its origin, whether it be extraordinary or not: whoever reads it will understand. [These days] we hear of so many visions and revelations. I am not saying that all of them would be true, but there can be some of them that are authentic. Because of its obvious importance as an endorsement of the authenticity of Valtorta's Work by the Supreme Head of the Church, recent critics of the Poem now attempt to impugn this Papal audience as a "fabrication" of its promotional literature. The fact that the Pope did grant this audience, however, is historically documented. Indeed, no less a personage than Edouard Cardinal Gagnon, writing to the Maria Valtorta Research Center from the Vatican on October 31, 1987, referred to Pope Pius XII's action as: "the kind of official Imprimatur granted before witnesses by the Holy Father in 1948."

As a result of this "Official Imprimatur" of the Supreme Authority of the Church, Fr. Conrad Berti and Valtorta's publisher, Emilio Pisani, felt authorized to bring out the first Italian edition of her Poem of the Man-God in four volumes from 1956-1959. However this was done as an anonymous work at Valtorta's request, and without the theological annotations of later editions to clarify ambiguous passages. It was perhaps for these reasons that in 1959, the Holy Office, apparently ignorant of the Official Imprimatur granted earlier by Pius XII, thus inproperly placed the Poem on the former Index of Forbidden Books. This was in effect to overturn the hierarchical structure of the Church, while at the same time violating Canon Law which outlaws any such reversal of a decision of the Supreme Head of the Church by a subsidiary Vatican Congregation, or even by appeal to an Ecumenical Council. This censure was perhaps due also to the Holy Office's ignorance of the favorable impressions made by Valtorta's Poem on Cardinal Joseph Pizzardo, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and expressed by him in a spirit of affection and of friendship to Father Conrad Berti. However, the Cardinal Secretary's favorable views were apparently never communicated to his subordinates or their successors in the Holy Office. http://heartofjesus.ca/MariaValtorta/M%20A%20R%20I%20A.htm Archbishop George Pearce said that he could not imagine anybody with an open mind who read Valtorta, who did not think that Valtorta's work was inspired by God. His carefully nuanced statement does not literally say that Catholics are required to believe Valtorta's work is of Divine origin, but he strongly suggests that it must be of supernatural origin. This is quite a significant statement by one of the successors of the Apostles, in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics believe bishops have the charism of teaching authority. Msgr. Michelini had locutions from Jesus Who said: "In a regenerated Church, Valtorta will have wide acclaim." 2. The objections of fact or history are totally mistaken. Here you have research showing the most amazing accuracy in her 4,000 page Masterpiece: http://www.saveourchurch.org/descriptionspoem.pdf That Maria Valtortas revelations are literally packed with strikingly accurate descriptions of first century Palestine reveals that what she saw was the very life and ministry of our Lord. This would mean that The Poem is not the product of mere pious imagination as seems at least partly true with other revelations of biblical persons and times. Over thirty percent or 79 (all entries marked with * and **) of the 255 geographical sites in Palestine mentioned in the Poem were not listed in the 1939 International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE) Atlas. 62 (all **) of these 79 were not even listed in the 184 page Macmillan Bible Atlas (MBA) published in 1968. Where did Maria Valtorta get all these names? For a first century eye-witness to include so many obscure and unknown names would, of course, be expected. And most surprising is that these names, obscure and unknown in the 1940s, are being proven authentic. 52 of these 62 have no biblical reference
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whatever and 17 of these with no biblical reference have been either indirectly confirmed as authentic by recent "ancient external sources" found in the Macmillan Bible Atlas (1968) or actually listed in the HarperCollins Atlas of the Bible (1989). This makes a total of 29 confirmations since the 1939 ISBE atlas listing. Also among those 62 sites are mentioned the ruins of 6 ancient Palestinian cities some corresponding to the modern consensus on location. In addition, Valtortas precise descriptions of the natural topography of Palestine from numerous locations and the information about the outside pagan world of that day, including people, places, customs, Greek and Roman mythology, related in the conversations of that day, are strikingly correct. Along with this material you will find refutation to the foolish charges by enemies of this work that apples were not grown in Palestine and that Maria Valtorta could not have seen screw drivers on Josephs bench! Screwdrivers - MV sees what she believes to be screwdrivers among Josephs tools. I,195,223; IV,119. [The Pythagorean philosopher Archytas of Tarentum (5th century BC) is the alleged inventor of the screw. Screws came into common use around the 1st century BC. These were the wooden screws that were used in wine presses, olive oil presses and for pressing clothes. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blscrewdriver.htm] 3. As to reports (also in the unsigned Vatican newapaper of 1960), about doctrinal or moral abberations in the POEM, recall that 2 years later the Holy Office allowed the work to be published, St. Padre Pio recommended it, and countless souls both learned and simple who have read it affirm the perfect doctrinal and moral purity of the Work. It is a major corrective to Modernistic Scripture "scholarship", and a way for priests especially to correct deviations in their formation. As to Mary's words at the scene of Calvary, read the context and you will the expressive sorrowful love which uses metaphor and hyperbole to show her great love. It is both beautiful and fitting. Please let the faithful know of the riches of this work. I have read it entirely four times and nothing so helps with both the spiritual life and the sacred ministry. God bless you in your work for His Love. Yours sincerely in Christ, Rev. Fr. Kevin Robinson The written testimony of Archbishop George Pearce indicates that an open mind will find Maria's work inspired by the Holy Spirit. The written testimony of Bishop Roman Danylak, S.T.L., J.U.D., confirms Pius XII's directive that it is good pasturage for the faithful. As
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bishops multiply in their endorsement of Maria's writings, it is clear that faith in her writings is more of divine rather than simply human origin. Archbishop Soosa Pakiam M. of Trivandrum, India, granted an Imprimatur for the Malayalam translation of POEM OF THE MAN-GOD in 1992. Archbishop Alfonso Carinci, Secretary of the Vatican Curia's Congregation for the Sacred Rites, endorsed Maria's Life of Jesus in 1946. That is 5 successors of the Apostles, including a Pope, that have endorsed Maria Valtorta's work with their charism of Magisterial teaching authority. "Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or His saints to the Church." Catechism of the Catholic Church #67, Revised 1997. Although Maria's writings are prophetic revelation, there are no "new" doctrines different from the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. On several pages, Jesus appeals for the unity of all Christians under the pope. Maria's writings, properly used, can be a spur to true ecumenical unity. The term "private revelation" is a non-scriptural term. The Bible only speaks of true or false prophecy. Pope Pius XII said: "Publish this work (Il Poema dell'Uomo-Dio) as it is; there is no need to say whether it is of supernatural origin, who reads it will understand." Feb. 26, 1948. Pius XII's cautious approval of the work fits in with Jesus' plan, Who told Maria that He wanted the work to spread like leaven throughout the Church, and that He did not want an open & noisy diffusion of it at that time even to the point of concealing her name as the author while she was alive. file:///C:/Documents and Settings/Owner/My Documents/My Pictures/tombstoneMariaValtorta.JPG Maria is laid to rest in the Crypt of the Basilica of Our Lady's Assumption in Florence. The servant of God will doubtless one day be canonized.