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Scientific Study on Medjugorje Apparitions

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Scientific Study on Medjugorje Apparitions 1 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Visionary Experiences Examined: Recent Scientific Studies of Extraordinary Religious Experiences and their Contribution to Spirituality – The Case of the Medjugorje Seers A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Theology and Religious Studies Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy © Copyright All Rights Reserved By Daniel Klimek Washington, D.C. 2015 Visionary Experiences Examined: Recent Scientific Studies of Extraordinary Religious Experiences and their Contribution to Spirituality – The Case of the Medjugorje Seers Daniel Klimek, Ph.D. Director: Raymond Studzinski, O.S.B., Ph.D. This dissertation will make a contribution to debates on mysticism and religious experiences by exploring the neuroscientific and medical studies performed on the Medjugorje visionaries and analyze what hermeneutical contributions these studies make to our understanding of extraordinary religious experiences. In June 1981, in the village of Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina (the former Yugoslavia), five teenagers and one child reported experiencing daily apparitions of the Virgin Mary, visionary experiences. Three of the six visionaries report to continue experiencing daily apparitions as adults. Throughout the past three decades, the Medjugorje visionaries have been subjected to an extensive amount of medical, psychological, and scientific examination, even while experiencing their apparitions. An exploration of the various scientific studies related to the visionaries of Medjugorje adds to our understanding of extraordinary religious experiences and responds to the need for incorporating new, multidisciplinary approaches to the study and interpretation of religious and mystical experiences. This dissertation will examine the major hermeneutical and epistemological debates surrounding the topic of religious and mystical experiences, tracing the major philosophical developments of the twentieth century. Using a constructive-relational method, this study will present and analyze the scientific examinations on the Medjugorje visionaries in juxtaposition, for the first time, with the major scholars and hermeneutical discourses focusing on religious experience. This dissertation demonstrates that the scientific studies on the Medjugorje seers make a threefold contribution to this subject: a contribution that is epistemological, hermeneutical, and that strengthens a criteria of adequacy in discerning religious experiences. The scientific studies in Medjugorje challenge an epistemological reductionism that denigrates every extraordinary religious phenomenon, such as visionary experiences, into a pathological or natural category of interpretation. Making a contribution to the history of hermeneutical debates about mystical experiences, the scientific studies on the Medjugorje visionaries point to something more in the experiences that the visionaries undergo through empirical examination of their apparitional phenomena. This dissertation by Daniel Klimek fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Spirituality approved by Raymond Studzinski, Ph.D., as Director, and by Stephen Rossetti, D.Min., Ph.D., and William Dinges, Ph.D., as Readers. ________________________________________ Raymond Studzinski, O.S.B., Ph.D., Director ________________________________________ Stephen Rossetti, D. Min., Ph.D., Reader . ________________________________________ William Dinges, Ph.D., Reader ii Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 William James and the Study of Mysticism ....................................................................... 7 Evelyn Underhill and Mysticism ......................................................................................................... 23 Categories of Visions (Visionary Phenomena) ................................................................................... 38 Corporal Visions ................................................................................................................................. 39 Imaginative Visions ............................................................................................................................. 40 Intellectual Visions .............................................................................................................................. 40 Passive Imaginary Visions .................................................................................................................. 41 Symbolic Passive Imaginary Visions .................................................................................................. 42 Personal Passive Imaginary Visions ................................................................................................... 42 Active Intellectual Visions ................................................................................................................... 46 Categories of Voices (Auditory Phenomena) ...................................................................................... 47 Immediate or Inarticulate Voices ........................................................................................................ 47 Interior or Distinct Voices .................................................................................................................. 48 Exterior Words .................................................................................................................................... 49 Critiques of James and Underhill ........................................................................................................ 49 Critiquing James: Hermeneutical Fallacies ..................................................................................................................... 50 Critiquing Underhill: Hermeneutical Reductionism .............................................................................................................. 54 The Case of Maria Valtorta ................................................................................................................ 59 The Case of Therese Neumann............................................................................................................ 61 A Holistic Approach: The Case of Gemma Galgani .............................................................................................................. 67 Summary ................................................................................................................................................ 70 Chapter 2 The Great Debate .................................................................................................................... 73 Perennialism .......................................................................................................................................... 74 The Perennial Invariant ...................................................................................................................... 76 The Perennial Variant ......................................................................................................................... 77 The Typological Variant ..................................................................................................................... 77 iii Constructivism ...................................................................................................................................... 79 Complete Constructivism .................................................................................................................... 81 Incomplete Constructivism .................................................................................................................. 82 Catalytic Constructivism ..................................................................................................................... 84 Developments in the Debate: The PCE and the New Perennialism ................................................................................................... 86 The Epistemological Question: A Kantian Hermeneutic or a “Kantian” Misreading of Kant? ........................................................ 91 The Bigger Picture .............................................................................................................................. 103 An Attributional Approach ................................................................................................................ 109 Religious Experience and Reductionism ........................................................................................... 126 Neurological/Psychiatric Reductionism ........................................................................................... 128 Psychoanalytical Reductionism ........................................................................................................ 132 Secular-Sociological Reductionism .................................................................................................. 137 Moving Toward Neuroscience and New Methodology .................................................................... 139 Summary .............................................................................................................................................
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