The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web

by Paolo Apolito

In 1994, a devout Catholic woman from Vermont began having religious visions and hearing the voice of the Virgin Mary. To spread word about her mystical experiences, she turned to the Internet. As Paolo Apolito records here, she is only one of many people who use the Web as a tool of religious devotion. Every day, thousands of Catholics--from Italy and Latin America to the United States and Bosnia--use the Internet to describe and celebrate apparitions...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226021505
• ISBN13: 9780226021508
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The Internet, the Virgin Mary, and the Faithful.

_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 prophec

How The Internet Is Changing Beliefs

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 th