Here's my standard canned response to folks who appeal to the writings commonly attributed to Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich:
The works attributed to Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich have no more authority than mine (that is to say, none). A German poet named Clemens Brentano fabricated nearly all the material attributed to Venerable Catherine. According to the vice-postulator for her canonization cause, Canon Martin Hülskamp of the German Diocese of Münster,
[N]o books are attributed to Anna Katharina Emmerick in the sense that she herself has hardly left any written proof. The substantial written documents left behind are written down by persons, who had settled in her vicinity, in particular the poet Clemens Brentano. These books have exclusively spiritual character and no official Church quality.
See the following links:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/jloughnan/salake.htm
http://www.emmerich1.com/VenerableEmmerich.htm
The latter page, toward the bottom, has the latest news on her canonization cause. The top half of the page has excerpts from the visions attributed to her by Herr Brentano. Her recent decree of heroic virtue has nothing to do with his writings. When appealing to the authority of Marian apparitions, it's a good rule of thumb always to stick to apparitions that have been approved by the Church.
Hi Bill. You are right, books written by and about saints -- especially those passing through a scribe -- usually do not come with any ecclesiastical or doctrinal "authority". Nor should they. However, we should pay a little more attention to what the saints have to say than to what other people have to say: their writings are not equal in weight to yours or mine. That doesn't mean they are right about everything, or should be trusted in matters beyond their expertise, but it does mean they deserve a little more respect than, say, someone writing in a blog comment box.
I'm not familiar at all with the works attributed to Emmerich and have no opinion about their quality. My beef with some of Emmerich's detractors doesn't really have anything to do with this: it has to do with what I perceive as their irrational bias against certain pre-modern understandings, especially with respect to Scripture, judgment, suffering, asceticism, and the supernatural. Mixed in with all of this is the claim that her visions are antisemitic, which, from what I have read so far, they are not. Maybe there's more evidence I'm not aware of -- for instance, Emmerich's alleged vision about the origin of the races has certain theological problems that mitigate against authenticity -- but so far I haven't seen any real antisemitism. What I have seen is a number of St. Blog's commentators over the last year complaining about antisemitism in every unflattering depiction of persons who happen to be Jews. These same individuals are all over Emmerich right now, and so far it seems likely that they are crying wolf yet again.
Posted by: Jeff Culbreath at July 9, 2003 02:43 PMAnne Catherine Emmrich is the most Qualifed PERSON of her age to see and witness the beagiane of time and the life of our Lored JESUS CHRIST HAVEING THE SIGMOTA that gives us something that the bible does not and I stand frim behind Stister Anne and her visions of our lord and savor JESUS CHRIST. She is to be made a sante on day and the wirld will see that this woman is a true person of GOD.
Posted by: Eden Williams at April 23, 2004 11:21 PMMetaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
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