'Real', trickery or diabolic ? Apparitions and the Supernatural :vetting and the Vatican.

DISCERNMENT OF ALLEGED SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA One of the most compelling attractions of Catholicism is the immersion in the supernatural. The Church birthed with the miracle of the resurrection. It was launched with the miracle of Pentecost. The old pagan gods of the Roman Empire gave way before the supernatural potency of the sub apostolic church. Despite the best efforts of schismatics down the ages, God has renewed and refreshed his Church with infusions of the mystery of the miraculous. Protestantism has increasingly succumbed to either dull rationality or hyper-hysteria. In the Catholic world the apparitions of our Lady remain one of the most powerful tools of renewal of piety, repentance and faith. But the supernatural is double edged. It presents us with authentic interventions, but equally with distorted and even diabolic phenomena. It is a truism that evil has the capacity to present itself as good. It is equally true that the supernatural can be mimicked. The Catholic Church has taken the task of discernment with the utmost seriousness. A good deal hangs on being able to tell good from evil and the authentic from the illusory. The last time the procedure for assessing the authenticity of supernatural phenomena took place was 1978. Their are a number of cogent reasons for Giving fresh thought to the process, of which the most persuasive is the development of social media. 20:15