The most widely read anti-Valtorta articles in English-speaking
countries are those published on EWTN or by those who work for them.
I don’t feel the need to discuss concerns about this particular
organization here because others have already done thorough
investigation and studies of EWTN (such as Christopher Ferrara’s
book EWTN:
A Network Gone Wrong)
and the refutations their anti-Valtorta articles speak for
themselves and are readily available here: An
Analysis and Refutation of All the Top Anti-Valtorta Articles
However, I do feel the need to address traditioninaction.com
because, since they are a traditional Catholic media outlet, they
are considered by some traditional and conservative Catholics to
ordinarily be more trustworthy than many organizations of the
mainstream Catholic media. On some topics and in certain cases, this
is true. Unfortunately, on this particular topic, they have proven
not to be trustworthy or reliable as my refutations of their anti-Valtorta
articles and this article demonstrate.
In fact, one of the priests who holds the same general position they
hold (Resistance), recently wrote to me, “I
once went to meet Atila Guimaeres [who works at TIA] and Marian
Horvat when I was on a visit to California. They are both good
people, and are fighting for the Faith but their judgments are not
always reliable, especially on Maria Valtorta.”
Another traditional Catholic priest contacted them politely
informing them about a refutation of
Horvat’s anti-Valtorta article hosted on their website and his
concerns about their article. In response, someone at TIA (whose
name will be withheld out of charity) responded in a somewhat
condescending, ill-natured way (which surprised me because he was
addressing a priest in good standing) with words that indicated to
me that he appears to not be interested in the truth and that
perhaps he might be motivated too strongly out of pride,
close-mindedness, and subjective emotions.
I also contacted them with complete politeness and openness about
concerns about one of their articles and a detailed demonstration of
possible errors in it and they never had the decency to reply with
even a short response.
A traditional Catholic retreatant also has experienced similar
sentiments with some of the articles they host. After reading my
refutation of Horvat’s article, she wrote, “I
am blown away. I find TIA [Tradition in Action] sometimes a bit too
stuffy at times, but I did not think that they would have done such
a poor job on the Poem.” Many
others have reported to me similar reactions after reading my
refutation of Horvat’s highly flawed anti-Valtorta article.
If something is from God and is true and is free of error in faith
and morals, then any attempts to discredit it or to demonstrate
error in faith and morals will necessarily be flawed (take, for
example, Catholic dogma, Scripture, or authentic revelations from
God such as the message of Fatima). The only thing that opponents of
the true work of God could do would be to try to discredit it
through errors, lies, methodological and logical fallacies,
distortions and misrepresentations, unsubstantiated subjective
accusations, and similar tactics. The evidence and an analysis of
Valtorta’s work shows that it undeniably comes from God and is free
from error in faith and morals (see the chapter of my e-book entitled, “A
Detailed Analysis of Maria Valtorta and Her Writings According to
the Traditional 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia’s Thorough Criteria for
Assessing Private Revelations”).
Assuming this is true, it necessarily follows that all arguments
against her work are based on errors, lies, methodological and
logical fallacies, distortions and misrepresentations,
unsubstantiated subjective accusations, and similar tactics. I have
analyzed just about every major anti-Valtorta argument and article
in the English language and have either referred to a another
person’s refutation or wrote one myself which demonstrates that the
arguments and articles in question are based on errors, lies,
methodological and logical fallacies, distortions and
misrepresentations, unsubstantiated subjective accusations, and
similar tactics. Likewise, in analyzing the anti-Valtorta articles
posted on traditioninaction.com, I have found the same thing (as a
matter of fact, the level of quality and honesty in the methodology
in TIA’s articles are oftentimes below that of EWTN and other
organizations).
What is also very interesting is that I have found that the majority
of those who publish and promote anti-Valtorta articles, when
pressed to defend these articles against the clear demonstration of
error in them, tend to respond with a lack of charity and in such a
fashion that shows that they are not truly interested in the truth.
This is an indication to me that in their dealings with these
articles and on this subject, they are not being led by the “good
spirit” as St. Ignatius of Loyola refers to in his Spiritual
Exercises,
but rather by a spirit of evil in the form of selfishness, willful
resistance to truth, anti-charity, presumption and prejudice,
calumny, pride, hypocrisy, immaturity, and similar manifestations of
bad fruit. This is further confirmation that substantiates that if
something is from God and is true and is free of error in faith and
morals, then any attempts to discredit it or to demonstrate error in
faith and morals will necessarily be flawed, and experiential
dealings with many of those who war against Valtorta and her
writings reveals the same, including those at Tradition in Action.
I think traditioninaction.com (on this particular topic) is another
case of an organization that “doesn’t want to be confused with the
facts” due to bias, laziness, or perhaps even pride and not wanting
to admit they were wrong about something or that they were
responsible for reposting highly flawed and erroneous articles.
I thoroughly analyzed Horvat's article and wrote an in-depth
refutation of it. Ordinarily Horvat is seen by some in traditional
Catholic circles to be a reputable and trustworthy Catholic writer.
However, as I quoted earlier, a respected and well-learned
traditional Catholic priest and theologian wrote to me regarding
Horvat saying, “I once went to meet Atila Guimaeres and Marian
Horvat when I was on a visit to California. They are both good
people, and are fighting for the Faith, but their judgements are not
always reliable, especially on Maria Valtorta.” Atila (just referred
to) works at TraditioninAction.org which posted Horvat's article.
In reading the refutation of her article, it is not difficult to see
very quickly that her article does not stand up to scrutiny, and is
in fact filled with serious (and, in fact, juvenile) methodological
errors. I have received a lot of feedback, where many have commented
that her article is so unscholarly, hypocritical, and weak, that
they think Horvat ought to be embarrassed by it. Many are surprised
that it was so bad, as the person I quoted earlier summed it up so
well when she wrote, “I
am blown away. I find TIA [Tradition in Action] sometimes a bit too
stuffy at times, but I did not think that they would have done such
a poor job on the Poem.” Unfortunately,
it appears that they trusted Horvat too much, which was a mistake
because Horvat displays a notable level of ignorance on the subject
she is writing about and her article is riddled with falsehoods,
deficient theology, wrenching of statements out of context with
false unsubstantiated insinuations, poor research, ignorance of too
many relevant facts, sweeping generalizations, lack of objectivity,
and an obvious unjustified bias against the Poem.
It is readily apparent from her article that she carried out a
cursory, non-in-depth investigation into Maria Valtorta’s writings
and based most of her article on only one source (Br. James's
article: a source which has proven to be highly uncredible). After
accounting for her falsehoods and false insinuations which are
easily shown as wrong, most of her remaining arguments are based on
unsubstantiated subjective impressions which are contradicted by
those of greater learning and authority than her. A complete
refutation of her article is available here: A
Refutation of Horvat’s Anti-Valtorta Article (PDF)
Pope St. Pius X said: “God’s
works have no fear of opposition. Opposition implants them more
deeply.” The
same has happened with Valtorta’s writings: the more that anti-Valtorta
articles are written and exposed and refuted, the more the orthodoxy
and greatness of Valtorta’s revelations shine forth and her work
becomes more known, particularly when the refutations are very
flawed, hypocritical, and weak such as the Horvat and Anselmo
articles published on Tradition in Action.
Antonio Socci agrees. Socci is a leading Italian journalist, TV show
host, author, and public intellectual in Italy. He is well known
among traditional Catholics because of his book The
Fourth Secret of Fatima,
which is one of the most prominent books about Fatima (in
particular, the Third Secret of Fatima) in recent times. Recently,
Antonio Socci wrote an article about The
Gospel as Revealed to Me / The
Poem of the Man-God that
was originally published in an Italian newspaper and which he also
published on his blog on April 7, 2012, in which he highly praises
it, saying:
For twenty years, after having laboriously stumbled through trying
to read hundreds of biblical scholars’ volumes, I
can say that – with the reading of the Work of Valtorta – two
hundred years of Enlightenment-based, idealistic, and modernist
chatter about the Gospels and about the Life of Jesus can be run
through the shredder.
And this perhaps is one of the reasons why this exceptional work – a
work which moved even Pius XII – is still ignored and “repressed” by
the official intelligentsia and by clerical modernism.
In spite of that, outside the normal channels of distribution,
thanks to Emilio Pisani and Centro Editoriale Valtortiano, the Work
has been read by a sea of people – every year, by tens of thousands
of new readers – and has been translated into 21 languages.
If I was one of the most vehement anti-Valtorta Catholics, whose
main goal was to discredit Valtorta’s writings – and I had at least
integrity and honesty – I would have to admit, in spite of myself,
that the recent anti-Valtorta articles of Anselmo de la Cruz are a
weak and embarrassing attempt at trying to demonstrate error in
Valtorta’s work and gives a bad name to the anti-Valtorta crowd, and
I would have wished for something better in its place. I would have
to admit that it gives Valtorta critics a bad name because they
contain a number of theological errors (one of which contradicts
Scripture itself) and they have a number of basic methodological
flaws. In fact, Anselmo’s articles are so unscholarly and
unsubstantiated that it almost wasn’t worth my time writing
refutations, but I feel obliged to do so because of what Pope St.
Felix III said: “Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to
defend truth is to suppress it, and, indeed, to neglect to confound
evil men – when we can do it – is no less a sin than to encourage
them.” In charity, I presume that he is of good will and that his
“witch hunt” against Valtorta is merely because of wrong
information, lack of research, or perhaps innocent and unintended
intellectual blindness or incompetency. We will see. One must be
mature, open-minded, and interested in the truth to find the truth,
but unfortunately, many people are not, including among traditional
Catholics.
If Anselmo de la Cruz was prosecuting Valtorta’s work in court, the
judge would have grounds to declare mistrial. Anselmo affirms
statements about Valtorta’s text that are factually incorrect and
cannot be substantiated when the text is examined closely. An
examination of the actual text shows that these affirmations are
false and their affirmation in his article can be classified as
academic dishonesty.
Anselmo claims several times that the Church teaches something which
the Church does not actually teach. Not only does Anselmo fail to
support these claims with relevant sources or quotes, but one of his
claims is actually heretical and in direct contradiction to
Scripture. He also confuses several theological principles and fails
to make necessary distinctions, thus misleading his readers.
Anselmo leaves out significant and relevant context that is
necessary to consider in doing an analysis of what Valtorta actually
wrote on many of the topics in hand. Thus, his article twists and
misrepresents Valtorta’s writings and is not a fair and valid
objective analysis of what is actually written. When her writings
are read in their proper context and all of the aspects are properly
considered, the passages are always morally and theologically
correct, and have been declared as such by many competent
theologians and ecclesiastical authorities (who, by the way, are far
more learned than Anselmo and who employ an honest, thorough, and
correct methodology in analyzing her work, with a scholarly level
leagues above Anselmo’s articles).
Lastly, Anselmo’s accusations and subjective insinuations are not
supported by relevant and irrefutable proofs, let alone by clear,
unmistakable moral and theological criteria.
After reading the analysis and facts laid out in my refutations of
his articles, it becomes glaringly clear that the articles by
Anselmo present so many errors and irregularities that it is
difficult to understand how it can be accepted in Catholic milieus,
including traditionalist ones. Because of the theological errors and
methodological flaws it contains – and other adjoining negative
aspects – I do not understand how it could be accepted by
traditional Catholic media outlets, such as Tradition in Action.
Either they did not carefully read the writings of Maria Valtorta
and fact check Anselmo’s article themselves, or they naively trusted
Anselmo as a trustworthy, unbiased, objective analyzer of her work,
while at the same time, neglecting to consult the commentaries and
theological studies of her writings done by undeniably trustworthy
and highly scholarly theologians, such as Fr. Gabriel Roschini,
O.S.M., who was a Consultor of the Holy Office and who is considered
by many to be the greatest Mariologist of the 20th century, who
published a 395-page Mariological study of her writings, or Fr.
Corrado Berti, O.S.M., professor of dogmatic and sacramental
theology of the Pontifical Marianum Theological Faculty in Rome from
1939 onward, and Secretary of that Faculty from 1950 to 1959, who
studied her work for decades and provided extensive theological and
biblical annotations of her work totaling over 5,675 footnotes.
In one of his articles, Anselmo posits the speculation about Maria’s
spiritual director and the Spanish translator of her work that they
might have been “accomplices in spreading a work that has serious
errors in matters of the Faith.” Considering that hundreds of
thousands around the world have derived tremendous spiritual benefit
from her work and that dozens of highly learned, trustworthy
traditional theologians and many bishops have affirmed her work is
free from error in faith and morals, truly from God, and that she is
a true victim soul, it seems just that his own supposition be
applied back to himself: perhaps Anselmo is an accomplice in trying
to discredit a true work of God (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5:39).
This possibility appears all the more credible or substantiated when
we consider that his anti-Valtorta articles contain a number of
theological errors, basic methodological flaws, and often contain
subjective accusations that are a misrepresentation of the text and
qualify as academic dishonesty. Like a modernist, many of the errors
in his article are logical fallacies, confusion of principles, and
failure to make distinctions. These problems I just mentioned are in
addition to his subjective claims
that are a clear distortion
and misrepresentation of the text. However, in charity, I presume
that he is of good will and that his “witch hunt” against Valtorta
is merely because of wrong information, lack of research, or perhaps
innocent or unintended intellectual blindness or incompetency. I
hope my refutation will open your eyes even if organizations like
Tradition in Action don’t want to be “confused with the facts”. I
encourage humble, honest, open-minded Catholics to recognize and
thank God for this gift of this mystic’s writings rather than fall
into a pharisaical, prideful, close-minded, ill-disposed mindset,
which disposes one to not want to be “confused with the facts” or
properly research things and reject one of God’s greatest gifts to
our generation.
All of the supposed “proof”, “evidence”, and arguments that Anselmo
has posited in all of his articles to try to substantiate his
groundless and often unsubstantiated subjective accusations against
Valtorta’s work has been entirely and thoroughly refuted, and he is
shown for what he is: a critic who has theological incompetency in
many areas, makes poor arguments and commits many methodological
flaws, makes faulty presumptions, who distorts and misinterprets
Valtorta’s text, brings in an obvious unsubstantiated subjective
bias and a lack of objectivity, makes unsubstantiated, sweeping,
generalizing statements, and in several places displays a type of
methodology and procedure that reminds one more of the Pharisees or
someone unhealthily paranoid rather than a good theologian.
I want to note that I am pleased that Anselmo wrote his articles
because, having a chance to analyze his strongest arguments against
Valtorta, it can now be seen that even this supposedly “trustworthy”
traditional Catholic blogger and vehemently anti-Valtorta critic
cannot satisfactorily provide objective valid evidence to indicate
that Maria Valtorta’s work should not be read by contemporary
faithful Catholics. This further substantiates that traditional
Catholics are justified in sharing the sentiments and theological
opinion of SSPX seminary professor Fr. Ludovic-Marie Barrielle,
FSSPX, whom Archbishop Lefebvre called “our model spiritual guide,”
the former of whom declared, “If
you wish to know and love the Sacred Heart of Jesus, read Valtorta!” Fr.
Barrielle’s position is also shared and substantiated by leading
pre-Vatican II theologians who are more learned than most priests
and layman (including this critic), especially in the areas needed
to judge mystical writings, and who furthermore studied it in much
further depth (not to mention that many of them actually personally
knew, investigated, and communicated at length with the author of
the work in question). These theologians also exhibited a healthy
open mind free of presumption and prejudice, humility, and a healthy
understanding of and balance in the area of emotions and affections,
all of which served to make their theological examination of the
author and her work all the more credible, trustworthy, and
objective.
Just like the saints and the Church have historically more clearly
explained or defined Church teaching when presented with objections
of skeptics, critics, or heretics – thus making the truth shine even
more brightly – I am pleased to use this critic’s objections to more
clearly show the strength of the Valtortian position and that it is
worthy of faithful Catholics of good will to read her work, to
benefit from it, and not only recognize that it is free of error in
faith and morals, but also has exceptionally high accordance with
Sacred Scripture and tremendous spiritual benefit for Catholics for
generations to come. God often takes what is evil (in this case, the
misguided actions of a well-meaning critic) to bring greater good
from it.
The Pharisees and scribes rejected Christ because they did not want
to know the truth. They did not want to be “confused with the
facts.” I hope my e-book will serve humble, honest Catholics of good
will who want to
know the truth about this private revelation and this great gift of
God for our generation. Heaven indeed did not waste its time in
giving this great gift! “Extinguish
not the Spirit. Despise not prophecies; but test all things, and
hold fast that which is good.” (The
Great Apostle St. Paul to the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 5:
19-21) |
