Private Revelations?

So to get us started, I'd like to just read from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 67.

Here it's following the section where it talks about the fact that God has said everything in His Word, and so public revelation is closed.

And then it goes on in paragraph 67 to tell us, quote, "Throughout the ages, there have been so-called private revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church.

They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith.

It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history.

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.

Christian faith cannot accept," quote, "revelations that claim to surpass or correct the revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions, and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such revelations." So I think one of the questions we want to ask up front is, you know, what is the difference between public revelation and so-called private revelations? And just to give an example of the private revelations that we're talking about here, um, two recent ones would be the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart.

In these things, we actually have a complex of purported apparitions or locutions, messages that are given, devotions that grow out of these things, and then the Church has in a certain way incorporated or, uh, adopted practices that come from both of these experiences, the, uh, the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart.

And in both cases, we have sort of theological developments that are not foreign to what's contained in public revelation, but which take the, the inspiration for their development from these events, the, uh, revelations, uh, of the Sacred Heart and of the Divine Mercy.

So just to put those out there as examples, I would ask, what's the difference between public revelation and what are being called private revelations?

So to get us started, I'd like to just read from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 67.

Here it's following the section where it talks about the fact that God has said everything in His Word, and so public revelation is closed.

And then it goes on in paragraph 67 to tell us, quote, "Throughout the ages, there have been so-called private revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church.

They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith.

It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history.

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.

Christian faith cannot accept," quote, "revelations that claim to surpass or correct the revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions, and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such revelations." So I think one of the questions we want to ask up front is, you know, what is the difference between public revelation and so-called private revelations? And just to give an example of the private revelations that we're talking about here, um, two recent ones would be the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart.

In these things, we actually have a complex of purported apparitions or locutions, messages that are given, devotions that grow out of these things, and then the Church has in a certain way incorporated or, uh, adopted practices that come from both of these experiences, the, uh, the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart.

And in both cases, we have sort of theological developments that are not foreign to what's contained in public revelation, but which take the, the inspiration for their development from these events, the, uh, revelations, uh, of the Sacred Heart and of the Divine Mercy.

So just to put those out there as examples, I would ask, what's the difference between public revelation and what are being called private revelations?