Newsletter n. 5/23 – Science, science and more science
Fantasizing is perhaps a pleasant thing, and giving credence to fantasies is humane, but at the same time very wrong. Thus, to put it with great respect and equal frankness, to imagine that the holy Catholic Church welcomes Maria Valtorta in her personal sanctity – of which I am personally convinced – and in the spiritual and apologetic value of her writings without scientific support (true, Galilean and proven ) is simply nonsensical. The disfigurement – and today we know perfectly well that it was a disfigurement – which was the unsigned article of 6 January 1960 on the first page of the Osservatore Romano of that time, entitled “A badly fictionalized life of Jesus”, which did not inform on the real contents of the then “Poem of the Man-God”, was very wrong. The accusation against the Publisher was that he had not waited for the control of the Vatican Congregation in charge of verifying the text; but with the continuators of Father Mariano Cordovani ofd. (1883-1950), known enemy of Valtortian writings, still on the alert, how was it possible to wait?
On the other hand, there was the story of a newsstand publication as told by Maria Valtorta to Msgr. Carinci in the letter addressed to him on March 8, 1949: “His Excellency Monsignor Traglia, who recently kindly approved the life of Christ of that certain Caius who from the first dispensation brings a particular deformity to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, 1st Chapter, a detail that lends itself to increasing the doubts of those who do not firmly believe in the Divine Conception by Mary”. The text, very colorful for the time and with many photographs, prints and drawings, was evidently a gaffe that also involved the Vatican. The understandable deduction that if such a text had received the official approval of a Cardinal there was no reason why Maria Valtorta’s could not have it too, was logical even if incorrect.
I found, bought and examined the text of “Caius”: it is simply illegible from any point of view. However, it was a pastoral attempt to spread knowledge of Jesus on a very popular level, done through a publication in weekly issues. If the attempt is understandable, the value however was and is null, indeed detrimental in fact. It is in fact forgotten, even if the anonymous writer who hides behind the pseudonym said he was “inwardly inspired”. This text was simply unscientific, pure devotionism. Maria Valtorta’s painful lament is therefore right: “Condescension for Caius now in Rome. […] And I?! I am told that in order to believe me, one would like to have proof”.
She herself gives 5 proofs of the veracity of her writings. In summary, these: (1) That “I, without any theological culture, have written pages that learned theologians, to write them, examine volumes and volumes of doctors who preceded them. (2) Having written a 20,000 page in my physical condition. (3) Being still alive when since 1934 a whole host of doctors had concluded that within three months I would die, and then repeatedly said that this resistance of mine cannot be explained humanly? (4) Seeing life flow back into my limbs already relaxed in a deathly abandonment, in my heart almost without more throbs, as soon as Jesus in the Eucharist: the Life, descend into me? (5) The way I reduced myself when I saw the Passion of the Lord is not a sign, is it?”.
Of course, much more was needed – and is needed – too. And this other was and is. Finally since 2012, indeed – to be more scientifically precise: from the first approved and verified scientific article – since 2017 a truly scientific path of studies and proven research has finally begun. What had only seemed to some scholars, such as Father Corrado Berti or Blessed Gabriele Allegra, but which unfortunately had never been studied in depth, is now extremely evident and confirmed. It’s about not quitting. Continue, continue and continue again, without ever getting tired, because if the Valtortian’s Work comes from Heaven (and I personally am convinced of it) the secrets left to human rationality are there to watch us and are just waiting to be discovered and used. Simple curiosity? Not at all! An unexpected apologetic help from Heaven to an ever greater understanding of the canonical Gospels themselves.
If this seems like an exaggerated statement, let’s think of the relic of the Shroud. Always revered, but from the discovery made through a “trivial” photographic negative, at the end of the 1800s, we were able to understand that God wanted to help us better welcome Jesus with this “letter” sent 2000 years ago and only in this time, ours, verifiable. It is so with the writings of Valtorta. They are also – and I repeat, also – a scientifically based “letter” for us rationalists of the 21st century, so tempted by thousands and thousands of fantasies about the Gospels to no longer trust Christian Revelation.
The Work, read in the right and simple way, confirms to us with the scientific facts contained in it that the canonical Gospels are very true, in conformity with reality and worthy of faith up to martyrdom. The critics, however, do not stand by. Falsehoods, half-truths, glaring truths mixed with misleading errors capable of preventing correct understanding are continually made available to those who want to deny the veracity of the Valtortian’s Work. Hence the need for new studies and research. The “Gospel” of Maria Valtorta is not a devotional writing, it is instead the interweaving, the first, between mysticism and Galilean science, which already serves an ever-increasing multitude of people who read one of the 31 languages into which the Gospel is translated, for the knowledge and love of Jesus to spread throughout the world.
Read also: supplement by prof. Liberato De Caro.