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The apparitions of

GARABANDAL

BY
F. SANCHEZ-VENTURA Y PASCUAL

Introduction

Page 10

l.—Señor Juan Antonio Monroy recently published a book called "El Mito de las Apariciones," or "The Myth of Apparitions." On the cover was a photograph of the persons involved in the supposedly miraculous events at Garabandal. The book was published in Tangier by Editorial Pisga. And on the very first page there stands out starkly a definition by Ethelbert Stauffer which is taken as a motif: "What is myth? . . . Myth", he replies, "is the language of all religion."
Monroy, editor of the newspaper "La Verdad", has taken the seemingly miraculous happenings at San Sebastian de Garabandal as a pretext to write what is nothing less than a blatantly violent attack on the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. To Monroy's mind, San Sebastian de Garabandal is no different from Lourdes and Fatima, which he considers a quagmire of contradictions and skillfully baited pitfalls laid by the Church to trap the unwary.

His book is written in the easy narrative style of the man in the street, and it is precisely as a man in the street that I feel obliged to counter it. I am interested in the subject of apparitions, too. In 1961, I wrote a book entitled "Estigmatizados y Apariciones" (Stigmata and Apparitions), in which I delved into these incomprehensible occurrences in the world of the supernatural.* Monroy and I are not theologians, and we probably both lack sufficient grounding to be able to deal authoritatively with matters of this nature. The subject intrigues us both, however, and we have likewise both studied it and then taken the daring step of publishing the fruits of our investigations. But there is one fundamental difference between us. Monroy (so he says) believes in God alone, and in the Bible. The author of this book, for his part, feels fortunate in believing in everything else, too. As a practicing Catholic, I accept all the Church's decisions with sincere and humble faith. Consequently, even before studying the subject, I firmly believed in the apostolate of the Blessed Virgin through her apparitions, and since I began examining them, my faith has strengthened and

*    Further proof of the interest that the author has always taken in visions is the fact that, on August 31st, 1964, the Teatro Pereda in Santander saw the premiere of his play called "Mensaje de Luz, El Misterio de Fatima", performed by the Mary Carrillo Company. The author used the nom-de-plume of Ventura del Val.

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