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The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web Reviews:
The Internet, the Virgin Mary, and the Faithful.
2005-06-05 - _The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web_ by Paolo Apolito in the series "Religion and Postmodernism" consists of reflections on the relationship between the internet, the Christian faithful, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. This book attempts to map out the new terrain made prominent with the growth of various discussion groups and websites dedicated to the Virgin Mary and her apparitions on the internet. The book discusses many of the major apparitions, including those at Medjugorje, Garabandal, and Fatima, and the role that modern technology is coming to play in their propagation. The book also discusses many of the seers and visionaries who claim to receive messages directly from Jesus or the Virgin Mother and who write about their experiences on their own personal websites and in discussion forums. Among these seers are Laura Zink, who lives in Vermont and allegedly receives messages from the Virgin Mary, Vernoica Leuken, of Bayside apparition fame, and Vassula Ryden, a Greek Orthodox visionary who has written about her experiences. While many of these figures remain controversial, it is interesting to note the sort of relationship that has developed between the Catholic church hierarchy and various visionaries claiming to receive messages from the Virgin Mother or Jesus. The more famous apparitions, including those at Medjugorje and Garabandal, remain controversial because of friction that has developed between the visionaries and the church hierarchy over their interpretation. The author attempts to explain how the internet has opened up an entirely new component to the experiences of the visionary, which often take place entirely outside of church sanction. The author also devotes a good deal of space to discussing the role of various modern technologies, including film and television, but also modern scientific instruments, in the determination of the miraculous appearances of the Virgin around the world. While some of the apparitions may be scoffed at by skeptics (or even regarded as satanically influenced by some fundamentalist Protestants or even some Catholics), they remain an important development in modern religious experience. And the internet is coming to play a much larger role in that experience as well, by serving as the method for propagating religious belief.

Belief in the "end times" also plays an important part in the life of many religious mystics in the modern internet age. Many of those who adhere to the messages of the visionaries believe in an imminent apocalypse, often accompanied by natural catastrophe, nuclear war, and other political upheavals. They have come to embrace a culture of survivalism often combining with right wing political elements. The internet is particularly important for such individuals as it allows them an opportunity to spread their ideas to others free from the scorn of the general public. With the appearance of the Virgin at Fatima and her prophecy there, various websites have sprang up focusing specifically on these end times events.

As a form of modern technology, the internet has problems which the unprepared believer may encounter in his or her search through the web. The author explains how the internet has created a vacuum in authority as well as a trend towards levelling which reduces all systems of belief to the same common denominator. In addition, many individuals have specifically linked these apparitions with the New Age or with various "hidden mysteries" websites. The author also explains how often an unsuspecting individual may encounter links to various disturbing, blasphemous, or even pornographic sites simply by following the trail of links on a given webpage.

This book provides a unique study of the relationship between modern religious experience and the role that the internet and other modern technologies are coming to play in that experience. Many of the faithful have flocked to the internet as a means to spread their message to many others easily and effectively as well as being a source of prayer. While the internet poses its own set of challenges, it remains a unique tool for Christians which can allow for groups and nontraditional communities to meet which would never have the opportunity to meet otherwise. Although many among the traditional faithful remain wary of new technologies, many others are meeting the challenge of the modern age by taking advantage of the internet as a medium of communication.


How The Internet Is Changing Beliefs
2005-06-02 - The Virgin Mary has appeared to devout Catholics for centuries. Famous apparitions have included the one that asked Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 to dig into the grotto at Lourdes, from which spouted a spring, from which sprang all sorts of miraculous healings. There were Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Fatima. There was a decline in such sightings in the mid-twentieth century, especially around the secularization of the sixties. But Laura Zink of Vermont hears and sees Mary and Jesus daily, and gets messages from them, and has put up a website so that anyone could read the words of the day. And she is far from the only one doing so; people are responding to visits of Mary more than ever before, and at least part of the reason for this is that the internet is making it acceptable (or trendy) for them to do so. In a wonderful anthropological tour of one specific aspect of the internet, _The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web_ (University of Chicago Press), Paolo Apolito explains that the other reason for the boom in Virgin-sighting was her appearance starting in 1981 at Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but even that visit has so many citations and pages on the Web that it has become far more influential that it ever could have in pre-internet days. Is the proliferation of this aspect of religion on the web changing the way people practice religion or think about miracles?

Apolito explains that technologizing the visionary and the signs and wonders that have an ancient tradition has indeed weakened the institution of the church. It is very seldom that priests and authorities of the church have a personal presence on the web or in chat rooms, for instance. There is no way of controlling visionaries, of course, and the visionary can set up a web page, it gets linked to other Marianist pages, and it is a world story advanced by those of similar beliefs and untouched by the church hierarchy. What is more, web sites may be set up to promote visionaries and visions while criticizing church officials who are not sufficiently enthusiastic about them. Such niceties of prior eras as parish life or the involvement of the local church in helping out its neighbors are seldom mentioned. Sometimes the visions reinforce each other, but often they contradict, undercut, or even debunk each other. This sort of immediate interaction between particular visions, their visionaries, and their fans was never possible before, and those navigating such sites will look in vain for firm points of reference. Believers can further be inspired by digital representations not only of light effects, but of statues that cry, paintings that come to life, a photograph that has an actual heartbeat, and other remarkable manifestations. Apolito has found significant problems in web navigation that would frustrate or endanger what he calls "the worshipful surfer," and he gives advice on surfing safely. He gives many examples of how those seeking devout sites might, by a few mere clicks, be taken to anti-Catholic or even pornographic sites.

Apolito has written an academic tome that is often dense and scholarly, but considering the liveliness and immediacy of its subject, is never dull. The original was written in Italian, and the translator (Antony Shugaar) has taken pains to try to preserve the wit in the original. Most of the websites Apolito has visited are American, since the US is has had the biggest burst anywhere of visionary phenomena. "If the Virgin Mary now speaks English, she speaks it with a decidedly American accent," he writes. Though much of the book, especially the descriptions of some of the web pages, is funny, Apolito is an anthropologist who has written before on apparitions and is not at all condescending about them. He has fulfilled his charge of documenting the activities of this part of the Internet, and says little about the validity of the beliefs of those involved. It is clear from his documentation, though, that the Internet itself is limiting the power and the influence of the formal church as the visionaries become more influential; the visionaries continue to increase in number as the Internet attracts more followers to them and more copy-cats. There will be an increase in the number of people viewing the world the mystic's way; this will not please skeptics, of course, but it should not please the church, either.