Introduction. Modern Marian apparitions, their background, and their religious milieu -- Melleray, 1985: a case study in the development of an apparition narrative -- Contexts of the Melleray apparition: from moving statues to Medjugorje -- Plan of the study -- pt. 1. Apparitions as religious experience. Personal experiences and public demands: La Salette, Lourdes, and Fatima. La Salette: the experience, the miracles, and the prophecies -- Lourdes: the background and the ecstacies of a young saint -- Later experiences at Lourdes and the development of the cult -- Approaching Fatima: Lucia and her childhood memories -- Assessing Fatima: the apparition and its effect on the seers -- Personal crises of health, public crises of faith: San Damiano.
Cont.): Physical and spiritual interventions for a dysfunctional body -- Padre Pio and Rosa's service to the sick -- Light and joy from the heavens -- Graces and comfort from the Earth: San Damiano's healing water -- New bodies and new problems: Rosa's institutional legacy -- Maintaining the one body: San Damiano and post-Vatican II politics -- Can the testimonies of thousands be wrong? San Sebastian de Garabandal. First phase: 18 June-26 July 1961 -- The formation of a cult of the paranormal at Garabandal -- Second phase: a shift in attention -- The little miracle -- Three periods of retractions -- Judgments of church authorities -- The word of five men against thousands -- pt. 2. Apparitions as religious knowledge.
Cont.): From personal to public: La Salette -- Personal secrets? -- Public secrets? -- Transmission of the secrets to the Pope -- New speculation -- Publication of the secrets -- A secret in three parts: Fatima. Secrets in 1917 -- Lucia's experiences, 1925-1927 -- The request for the consecration of Russia, 1929 -- Lucia's memoirs, 1935-1941 -- Unpublished "third secret" sent to Rome -- Cold War anxieties, the third secret, and 1960 -- The third secret and the popes -- Conclusion -- The drama of secrets in post-World War II Marian apparitions. The development of dramatic scenarios around secrets -- The great miracle of Garabandal -- The chastisement and the warning -- The ten secrets of Medjugorje -- The sign of Medjugorje -- Secrets and the negotiation of authority.
Cont.): The fundamentals of modern apparition worldviews. Messages from the Heavenly Mother: the popular apocalyptic ideology of apparitions -- History as divine plan: modern conceptions of a Marian age -- History as conspiracy: Necedah and its later development -- Suffering, knowledge, and exploitation: apparitions as apocalyptic experience.
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