The Catholic Church approaches visionaries with a great deal of skepticism. Belief in visions or any post-apostolic revelations is not required of churchgoers. In most cases, the church actively discourages the faithful from getting involved in them.

Despite the official skepticism, there has always been a great deal of interest in alleged appearance of Jesus or Mary and in private revelations to visionaries. Some of them are fraudulent, many are delusional and a rare few may actually be legit.

For example, the “revelations” of Anne Catherine Emmerich, used by Mel Gibson in “The Passion of the Christ,” were found to be “devout fiction or, to put it more harshly, as well-intentioned frauds” created by Clemens Brentano, a German Romantic poet. (See “A Movie, a Mystic, a Spiritual Tradition” by John O’Malley, S.J., America, March 15, 2004.) The revelations were not used by the church in judging her sanctity.

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The problem with secularism is that it means different things to different people. To many religious conservatives, secularism means banning religion from the public square. To many liberal secularists, secularism means keeping religion from imposing its doctrines on others. That is why I find myself at times agreeing with both sides of this debate.

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In a dense 6,200-word address to the Royal Courts of Justice, Archbishop Rowan Williams hoped to initiate a scholarly discussion of the relationship between Islamic law and the statutory law of the United Kingdom. Instead, the archbishop of Canterbury found himself in the middle of a firestorm as pundits quoted him out of context and called for his resignation.

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Up through Super Tuesday, Catholic voters were strong supporters of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

The Catholic vote helped her win in New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. In these states she won the Catholic vote by 15 to 40 percentage points. On Super Tuesday, she only lost the Catholic vote in Missouri and Georgia. If she had won the Catholic vote in Missouri, she would have won the state.

Experts are divided on why Catholics voted for Hillary. Most scholars believe that once the number crunchers get a hold of the exit poll data and control for income, gender, age, education and issue concerns, the “Catholic factor” will disappear. For example, in New Hampshire Catholics tend to be working-class ethnics, while in California, many are Hispanic.

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