An excerpt from The Grace of Interior Prayer, by Augustin Poulain, S.J., 6th edition (published 1921).

From Chapter XXI, Revelations and Visions (continued): Illusions to be avoided 42.The different causes of falseness just enumerated have often been combined with the object of giving publicity to false prophecies of a political nature. These abound particularly at times of great political or religious disturbance, the popular imagination being then over-excited. In the thirteenth century St. Bonaventure complained of hearing to satiety prophecies dealing with the Churchs troubles and the end of the world (De profectu religiosorum, Book III, ch. lxxvi). At the end of the fourteenth century, during the great Western Schism, seers arose on all sides, and their visions gained such an influence and a circulation as had been unknown before.... In some of the gravest sermons reliance was put upon these baseless predictions (Salambier, The Great Schism of the West, ch. vi, 4). Gerson, who took part in the Council of Constance, at which the Great Schism and the struggle between the rival Popes was put an end to, says that there were then an incredible number of holy and mortified men who had false revelations at this period, and that he has this information from credible witnesses. He adds: Many believed that they had learnt by revelation and with certainty that they would themselves be the future Pope (De distinctione verarum visionum). At the beginning of the sixteenth century Italy experienced a regular epidemic of politico-religious prophecies. This effervescence began with those made by Savonarola in Florence. Religious and hermits swarmed over the country, and while commenting upon the Apocalypse, they announced from the pulpit or in public places revolutions in the temporal and spiritual governments, to be followed by the end of the world. Peasants and young girls alike fell to prophesying. In the fifth Lateran Council, in 1516, Leo X was obliged to publish a Bull by which public prophecies by preachers were prohibited (Pastor, History of the Popes, edited by Fr. Antrobus, Vol. V, end of Introduction; also Mansi, Collection of Councils). Let us now come to the eighteenth century. There were prophecies springing up constantly during the French Revolution, prophecies that were clear and full of detail with regard to past events, vaguer as to future occurrences and often refuted by facts when they thought fit to be definite; promising a deliverer who did not appear, and soon substituting another prediction, which was put forward in the character of an infallible utterance (Abb Sicard, Lancien Clerg de France, Vol. III, Book III, ch. vi, p. 153). In the nineteenth century we have also epidemics of prophesyings: they announced the Comte de Chambords reign, or that of the Naundorff. They took their inspiration

from doubtful prophecies regarding the great Pope and the great King, which the Ven. Holzhauser had inserted in his Commentary on the Apocalypse in the seventeenth century. It is to be regretted that religious journals should so often have collected and spread abroad these absurdities which bring religion into discredit. In a letter already quoted (36 bis), Mgr. Dupanloup laments the great number of prophecies that are hawked about on all sides by the enterprise of booksellers. I have now, he says, more than twenty volumes before me, from Belgium and France in particular (p. 1108). He recalls the words of Pius IX in his allocution of April 9, 1872: I do not give much credit to prophecies, because those especially that have recently appeared do not merit the honour of being read; and this other, of July 5, 1872: A large number of prophecies are in circulation; but I think that they are the fruit of the imagination. The twentieth century is in no wise behind its predecessors. When, in 1901, the French Chambers were discussing at great length the laws that were destined to destroy the Religious Orders, prophetic imaginations came into play. Certain visionaries felt themselves impelled to go to the Holy Father to confide to him their predictions and secrets. One of their directors told me that on arriving in Rome his penitent was much surprised to find ten other persons who had come with the same intention. A cardinal listened to them very patiently, but audience with the Holy Father was refused to them. I have it from a reliable source that one of the present claimants to the French throne constantly receives letters from prophets and prophetesses who foretell his destinies and give him advice, professedly in Gods name. He is weary of them. 43.Nothing is easier than to invent political prophecies in this way. It is only necessary to announce the advent of great misfortunes to be followed by extraordinary deliverances. These statements can be put about without fear, for no one can prove the contrary. A suspicious character in modern political prophecies is the fact that they never lead us to withstand wicked men, and never suggest any serious manner of resisting them. Some even predict that the world is to change suddenly, by a miracle. A new era is on the point of appearing; everyone will become holy in an instant. The conclusion drawn from such predictions is that we should fold our arms and wait. Since God is to do everything, and makes a point of proclaiming it in advance, it would be an indiscretion and foolishness on our part to wish to help Him and to anticipate His appointed hour. Let us, then, go on doing nothing! This is a convenient doctrine. I was objecting to one of these false prophetesses, one day, that the world seems, on the contrary, to become more and more wicked, and that we were proceeding in the opposite direction to the great renovation that she was announcing. She replied: It is a good sign. God will not intervene until the evil is at its height. This answer

teaches us nothing. When can anyone say that the evil is at its height? And, further, you declare that this maximum will he reached soon, and not in two thousand years. How do you know this?