Of all the debates, articles, podcasts, and videos I have seen by LDS Apologists explaining the Great Apostasy, I have felt that one of the most important questions, perhaps the most important, has been ignored. Why didn’t the Apostles ordain Apostles to succeed them? This question is one that Latter-Day Saints must provide an answer to; the entire Great Apostasy narrative depends upon it.

I believe that the broader debate around the LDS doctrine of the Great Apostasy is often quite weak on both sides. Catholics often try to appeal to Matthew 16:18 as a proof text that alone debunks the Great Apostasy; at other times, it is rejected based upon a simple intuition that God would not allow such a thing to happen. I believe that the treasury of revelation given to us by the Church is able to equip us with better tools to refute the LDS doctrine of the Great Apostasy.

In this article, I will focus on pushing back on the coherence of the LDS narrative in an internal critique (mostly). Then, I will briefly provide how a Catholic would make sense of the data I present. This will not be exhaustive by any means, and I am more than happy to engage in a follow up.

Anti-LDS apologetics are often devoid of charity. If anything I wrote in this article comes off as rude or aggressive, I apologize. I ask that those who join in this conversation try to stay charitable as well.

Before I am accused of strawmanning the Great Apostasy, I want to make it clear that I consciously do not treat every aspect of it (such as corruption of doctrine). However, this article is focused on the most essential aspect of it, the loss of Priesthood keys via the cessation of the Apostolic office. The loss of the Priesthood necessitates a restoration; the corruption of doctrine only necessitates a reformation.

Why Didn’t the Apostles Ordain Apostles to Succeed Them?

For Catholics, this is a straightforward question. It was because the Apostles knew their function was complete, that no men met the prerequisites for the office, and that God did not will its continuation.

Three claims, which I will later elaborate upon, establish this:

1. The Apostles completed their essential function, the promulgation of the deposit of faith.

2. By roughly 100 A.D., no living men met the conditions to be appointed to the office of Apostle by other Apostles.

3. God could directly appoint Apostles (even after they all died), but He chose not to.

Catholics and Latter-Day Saints agree that the appointment of new Apostles ceased after the first century; however, the LDS side introduces a positive claim, the frustration of God’s intent for the Church.

There are only two options: either God’s plan was frustrated by human resistance, or God did not intend to maintain the Apostolic office in perpetuity. The burden of proof lies upon Latter-Day Saints to show that God’s plan for the Church was actually frustrated.1

The LDS account of Apostleship:

Q: What was God’s intention for the Apostolic Office?

A: The Church was to be guided and ruled by the Apostles for perpetuity. These Apostles would serve as special witnesses to Christ, possess the Keys to bind and loose, and receive divine revelation.2

Q: Who was Eligible to be selected as an Apostle?

A: Any man with the Melchizedek Priesthood.34

Q: How are Apostles called?

A: Ordinarily, “They are chosen through inspiration by the President of the Church and ordained by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.” They can also be called by God directly. The final way they can be called is by divinely appointed witnesses (such as in 1835).

At least up to the end of the first century,

1. The Church had a need for Apostles (and God willed that it would have them).

2. The Church had men that could be called Apostles.

3. The Church had multiple ways to ordain new Apostles.

By this account, it seems that in principle, nothing should have prevented the calling of new Apostles.

Yet, no Apostles were called after the first century. Let’s explore some potential reasons for this from an LDS perspective:

1. The Apostles were killed too fast for them to appoint new Apostles.

2. The Apostles thought it was pointless to appoint new Apostles, since they would be killed immediately.

3. Nobody held the Melchizedek Priesthood and therefore could not be appointed.

4. The Apostles didn’t know the office was intended to be perpetual.

5. The Apostles wanted to let the Keys be lost.

6. The Apostles were directed by God to not appoint more Apostles.

7. The Apostles were too scared of persecution if they appointed more Apostles.

8. The Apostles couldn’t gather together to appoint new Apostles.

9. The Apostles appointed new Apostles, but they apostatized and the Keys were lost.

10. The Apostles believed Christ would return soon and thought ordaining Apostles would be unnecessary.

11. The Apostles only appointed Bishops as their successors, mistakenly believing this to be adequate.

12. Every eligible man was a heretic, and so the Apostles couldn’t ordain them.

13. No men were holy enough to be ordained as Apostles.

14. Heresy was so rampant that the Apostles thought the Church wasn’t salvageable.

15. The Apostles were deceived by Satan into not appointing new Apostles.

16. The Apostles were stuck in hiding and couldn’t appoint new Apostles.

17. The Apostles thought God would keep calling Apostles directly, so they didn’t have to.

18. The Apostles were waiting for divine signs that didn’t come.

These are the most plausible reasons that came to my mind as to why God’s will for Apostles to be appointed would be thwarted. Some I have heard, and some I created. For example, here is #2 from Jacob Hansen:

This argument goes:

1. If the Lord calls a new Apostle, the Apostle will be killed.

2. If an Apostle will be killed, it is useless to call him.

3. Useless things should not be done.

Therefore, the Lord should not call a new Apostle.

This exchange was a bit off the cuff; I am not putting this forward as if it is Hansen’s best argument. However, it does reflect common assumptions held by Latter-Day Saints about the landscape of the first century Church.

The second premise is false. Just because one will die (as all do) doesn’t mean that any work he does is meaningless, or he cannot accomplish anything while alive. Let’s take a more charitable interpretation; perhaps what Jacob intended to say was that they would be killed too quickly for them to accomplish anything. It seems exceptionally unlikely that the Apostles would let the Church disappear instead of risking a new Apostle being killed. This is not how the Apostles are characterized in the Acts of the Apostles. The twelve Apostles died over a span of 60-70 years!5 Further, the Apostles did not seem to believe appointing Bishops to be a waste, even if they would be killed. As I will show later, they foresaw this and planned accordingly.

The 18 possible explanations I previously listed can be sorted into 4 categories:

1. The Apostles were ignorant of their duty to ordain successors.

2. The Apostles were too scared to ordain new Apostles.

3. The Apostles were physically unable to ordain new Apostles.

4. The Apostles deliberately chose to not ordain new Apostles.

Addressing #1

This explanation would impugn Christ’s competence as a teacher. Additionally, the New Testament shows this was not the case. In Acts 1, St. Peter and the Apostles demonstrate their awareness of God’s will that Judas be replaced: “Let another take his office.”6

Addressing #2

This is inconsistent with the boldness of the Apostles displayed in the Acts of the Apostles, particularly in their willingness to face death and injury.

Addressing #3

This seems to be the most probable of the four theories from the LDS perspective. However, it has its weaknesses. First of all, the Apostles ordained many Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons. They had the time and ability to travel to local Churches to appoint clerics.

One might object that this narrative occurred in the 40s AD, and such things might not have occurred later in the century. Luckily, we have extra-biblical evidence that proves these ordinations continued.

St. Polycarp was born in 69 A.D. This is known because the account of his martyrdom in 155 A.D. claims he is 86 years old. His writings and those of his correspondents verify this timeline. This would indicate that his ordination likely occurred in the 90s A.D.

Tertullian, shortly after St. Irenaeus, wrote:

The Apostle St. John lived until approximately 100 A.D.; he had plenty of time to appoint Apostles. If he appointed Bishops around Asia Minor, why wouldn’t he appoint Apostles? This is also strong evidence against the notion that no men were worthy to be ordained as Apostles.

Finally, the first century persecution of the Church was not universal; Jewish persecution was concentrated in Palestine and Roman persecution was local and sporadic. The systematic Roman persecution of Christians did not occur until the third century. The time was not quite as dangerous as we commonly imagine. See “Persecution & Martyrdom” in Early Christianity - World History Encyclopedia for a brief overview.

Addressing #4

If the Apostles deliberately chose not to appoint new Apostles, they did so either in accordance with or contrary to God’s will.

If they chose against God’s will, this would seriously undermine the credibility of the Apostles. It also seems inexplicable that God would choose such men to govern the Church, only to destroy it. The Apostles themselves would be the cause of the Great Apostasy. On the other hand, if this was done in accordance with God’s will, then the Catholic position is vindicated: God did not will the continuation of the Apostolic office.

The best argument the LDS could put forward here is a conditional intent: God only intended the office to continue if the people remained faithful, and they did not. This, however, relocates the problem. Now one must show that the Christians of the early second century were unfaithful enough to forfeit the Church itself. Yet, what we know of the piety and martyrdoms of these Christians does not fit this thesis.

The Old Testament makes this theory even more difficult. Here we must distinguish between breaking a covenant and revoking one. God tolerated the golden calf, child sacrifice, and centuries of idolatry without revoking Israel’s priesthood or the covenant. God continually remained faithful towards His unfaithful people. Jeremiah foretold that this new covenant would be even greater than the old covenant:

Here, the Lord says that the new covenant will not be like the old covenant on account of a special grace that man will now possess, the law being written upon man’s heart. If the lesser priesthood (Aaronic) could survive Israel at its worst from Moses to John the Baptist, one must explain how the greater priesthood of Christ, a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6-13), could be forfeited within decades, by a generation of faithful believers. This aspect of the Great Apostasy requires that God respond to man’s unfaithfulness with a total revocation, a response that never occurred in the Old Testament. Additionally, if it is true that the early Christians were so wicked or unfaithful that they merited God revoking their Priesthood authority, we should expect the early members of the LDS movement to display a much greater faithfulness and moral character.

The Catholic Solution

Now, I will briefly present the Catholic case, from scripture and the early Church Fathers, for why the Apostles did not appoint Apostles to succeed themselves.

1. No Living Men Were Qualified by the Early Second Century

The New Testament shows us two modes of appointment to the Apostolic office.

The First Mode: Direct Appointment by God

This also occurred after Christ’s resurrection in the calling of St. Paul:

The Second Mode: Appointment by the Apostles

This scene in Acts 1 also tells us what makes one eligible to be appointed as an Apostle by the Apostles. James Talmage, an early 20th century LDS Apostle, lays these out in his book The Great Apostasy:

By the early second century, everybody that met these criteria would have been dead. Therefore, no new Apostles could be elected by men. God could have appointed new Apostles directly after this time, but He did not.

What about the other Apostles?

The New Testament also calls Barnabas, James the brother of the Lord, Andronicus, and Junia Apostles. Like Paul, these Apostles were not part of the twelve. Barnabas is the only one of these with an account of his calling, where God directly chose him:

2. The Witness of the Church Fathers

This, I believe, is the strongest piece of evidence for the Catholic side. If the Church had lost the Keys of the Kingdom, the power to receive revelation, and the most central governing authority with the death of the last Apostle (as the LDS would frame it), wouldn’t we expect to see some kind of panic from the Fathers of the time? We don’t. It would seem as if the institutional Church had disappeared without anybody noticing.

Here, we can see how those who knew the Apostles (or knew men who knew the Apostles) understood their role in the Church. I will invoke two Fathers within the first two centuries: Pope St. Clement of Rome and St. Irenaeus of Lyon.

Pope St. Clement of Rome

St. Clement was the 4th Bishop of Rome and knew the Apostles personally. Early tradition identifies him as the same Clement mentioned by St. Paul in Philippians 4:3. St. Clement was martyred around 100 A.D., around the time of the death of St. John, the last Apostle.

In his Epistle to the Corinthians, he wrote:

St. Clement tells us that

1. The Apostles ordained Bishops and Deacons “having proved them by the Spirit”

2. The Apostles possessed a foreknowledge of the conflicts and deaths the Bishops were to face.

3. In light of this foreknowledge, the Apostles gave the Bishops instructions about appointing the Bishops who would succeed them.

By this, St. Clement gives us a picture of the role and lives of the Apostles within the first days of the Church. They spread the gospel, ordained Bishops to continue their work, and suffered martyrdoms having delivered the faith to the Church to hold fast to.

I believe St. Clement’s point about the foreknowledge of the Apostles is the most pertinent. If they anticipated the deaths of the bishops and set up men to succeed them, how is it that they could not have anticipated their own deaths and made the necessary preparations?

St. Irenaeus of Lyon

One thing Latter-Day Saints are correct in pointing out is the doctrinal strife within the early days of the Church. Around 180 A.D., St. Irenaeus took up the work of refuting the false doctrines of his day in his work, Against Heresies. St. Irenaeus was a spiritual son of St. Polycarp, having grown up in Smyrna. St. Polycarp was the Bishop of Smyrna and knew St. John the Apostle personally. So, while St. Irenaeus did not know the Apostles personally, he was only one generation removed.

In Book 3 Chapter 3 of Against Heresies, St. Irenaeus takes up the question, “how do we know which doctrines to believe?” There is a common proof text here for the Papacy, but this chapter is also incredibly relevant to the topic of the Great Apostasy.

Against Heresies (Book III, Chapter 3)

1. It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries, which they were in the habit of imparting to “the perfect” apart and privily from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the Churches themselves. For they were desirous that these men should be very perfect and blameless in all things, whom also they were leaving behind as their successors, delivering up their own place of government to these men; which men, if they discharged their functions honestly, would be a great boon [to the Church], but if they should fall away, the direst calamity.

…

3. The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone [in this], for there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles…

In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth.

St. Irenaeus witnesses that the Apostles appointed Bishops to be their successors in order that the faith would be preserved and handed on. St. Irenaeus, being only one generation removed from the Apostles (through the St. Polycarp — St. John link), demonstrated the Catholic understanding of the Apostolic office and its succession through the episcopate.

Conclusion

Of the two interpretations presented in this article, I believe that only the Catholic answer fits the evidence. The Apostles deliberately established bishops, not apostles, as their successors. St. Clement wrote that they did this with “perfect foreknowledge,” giving instructions for the succession to continue “when these should fall asleep.” It is inconceivable that the Apostles could have planned for the deaths of the bishops but not their own. If the Apostolic office was, as St. Paul taught, the Church’s foundation (Ephesians 2:20), it makes sense that it would only be laid once. This is also why the heavenly Jerusalem bears “twelve names of the twelve apostles” on its foundations (Revelation 21:14).

The Church of the first and second centuries was full of Saints, not a wicked company of men who forfeited their authority. The new covenant they stood under, which is everlasting and better than the last, has been sealed with the blood of Christ. It is an abundant wellspring of grace, under which man and God can be and have been reconciled. The martyrs, following the example of the Apostles, endured torture and death before they denied the faith. This Apostolic faith has been clung to at all costs and in all ages; today we still receive it through the Church of Jesus Christ, the Holy Catholic Church.

Introduction

The apparitions at Zeitoun, Assiut, and Warraq provide seeming counter examples to the miracle approach to Catholicism. Critics, such as my fellow Substack traveler Bayesing at the Moon, argue that these miracles seem to have some vindicatory force for Coptic Orthodoxy, at least at the level of an internal critique. Within this essay, I sketch an outline for dealing with these Marian apparitions from a Catholic perspective under the assumption they are valid apparitions.

My article assumes the truth of the apparitions without ruling out skeptical explanations. I look forward to Caleb Jackson’s forthcoming article on these apparitions.

The Apparitions

Zeitoun

From April 2nd, 1968, to May 29th, 1971, a luminous figure with the appearance of the Virgin Mary appeared atop St. Mary’s Coptic Church in Zeitoun, Egypt. This was not one continuous apparition, but one that would appear and disappear frequently. Hundreds of thousands of people (at least) witnessed the apparition, even after the Egyptian government shut off the lights surrounding the Church. The above image is a photograph of the apparition.

Assiut

Beginning on August 17th, 2000 and ending in January of 2001,1 a glowing figure of the Virgin Mary similar to Zeitoun appeared above St. Mark’s Coptic Church in Assiut, Egypt. Like Zeitoun, this apparition was not continuous, was witnessed by thousands, was witnessed after the authorities shut off the lights of the surrounding area, and was photographed many times.

Warraq

On December 11th, 2009, an apparition of light appeared above the Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael Coptic Orthodox Church in Warraq al-Hadar, Egypt. The apparition appears to have only occurred in December, with the same intermittent apparitions, thousands of witnesses, and photographs. There is also at least one video of the event, which you can watch here. As far as I can tell, Warraq has slightly more skepticism around it than Zeitoun or Assiut. I will leave the explanation of that to Caleb Jackson.

The Catholic Response

There are two important features of all three of these apparitions I think are worth reflecting on:

1. The lack of message.

2. Independent reasons for the apparitions.

Lack of Message

Unlike Fatima, in which the apparition of the Virgin Mary communicated a very specific message (part of which included the conversion of Orthodox Christians to Catholicism), no message was ever communicated by any of these apparitions. One exception possibly exists for Zeitoun. According to secondary sources, the pastor of St. Mary’s revealed on his deathbed that the Virgin had appeared to him prior to the apparition. The recorded message mentioned by these secondary sources was “Be ready!” Obviously, this message has no doctrinal content.

Given that there is no doctrinal content revealed by the apparition herself, we are left with only what can be ascertained by the facts of each apparition. In my view, these apparitions would give some credence to the doctrines about Mary taught by the apostolic churches, her personal holiness, her divine favor, and perhaps her bodily assumption. However, it is worth pointing out that many Muslims saw these miracles as consistent with Islam, so I am unsure how much can be truly said regarding what these miracles demonstrate.

That said, there is no message corresponding to “Catholics and Muslims should become Coptic Orthodox.” Without a corresponding message, there is no vindicatory aspect outside of whatever truths can be ascertained about the Virgin Mary.

Independent Reasons for the Apparition

With the lack of message established, we can begin to think about why God would perform such a miracle. If we can establish strong, doctrinally independent reasons for God to perform the miracle, then the “level of vindication” would seem to fall.

I argue that the primary independent reason was to protect Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt from Muslims. This can be seen in three case studies:

1. The 1960 Ben-Gurion letter forgery.

According to Amir Krispel:2

This occurred just prior to the Six-Day War in 1967, and was reflective of growing suspicions towards Copts in Egypt. While Egyptian President Nasser demonstrated commitment to the Copts, sectarianism was on the rise. It is hard to say what would have happened to the Copts after the Six-Day War had the Zeitoun apparition not unified the Christians and Muslims of Egypt and given them hope.

2. The Kosheh Massacres

In August of 1998, two Coptic Christians were murdered by Muslims. After this, there were severe persecutions of several Copts. In January of 2000, more violence was brought against the Copts. As Jason Brownlee from the Carnegie Endowment records:

This all occurred just prior to the Assiut apparition. After the apparition, violence appears to have declined for a time.

2. The 2008 Cairo Church Riot

According to a DOJ document quoting a CSW press release:

This occurred just prior to Warraq, and is reflective of the sectarian violence which was going on at the time. The Copts were facing persecution that was quelled by the apparition.

In summary, we can conclude that all three of these apparitions promoted peace among the Coptic and Muslim populations in order to prevent more violence. It is important to note that it was the Copts in particular who were being persecuted, not just the Christians in general, so it makes sense that God would place the apparition on the Coptic Church in particular.

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Confusion About Vindication?

Bayesing at the Moon has said:

In response, we need to remember that these apparitions are not, in and of themselves, vindicatory of Coptic Orthodoxy. This is plainly obvious from the fact that many Muslims saw the miracle and interpreted it within Islamic theology. It is also obvious from the principles of interpreting miracles within the Catholic system. The lack of clear, non-Catholic doctrinal content makes this unproblematic. All that can be established about Mary from the apparitions is consistent with the Catholic position about Mary. At worst, the apparitions are evidential chips towards Coptic Orthodoxy, but those chips are outweighed by the massive number of Catholic Marian apparitions and other miracles.

But what about the fact that many people could interpret this miracle as vindicatory? We can introduce the principle here that God could permit individuals to be mistaken about how much the miracle proves. Notice what I’m not saying: I’m not saying God sends false messages in his apparitions. But I am saying that God can allow individuals to err in their own application of reason when they interpret a miracle. Take, for instance, false prophets who speak in the name of pagan gods. Simply because an Israelite was deceived by a false prophet who did this does not refute the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant has specific instructions for interpreting true and false prophecy. It is not the fault of God that the Israelite failed to apply those principles correctly.

To summarize, God could work a miracle which he foresees will be misunderstood by a few people as long as he has adequate reasons for doing so. If God prevented the slaughter of thousands of Coptic Christians, then this would seem to be just, even if by our own fault we err in figuring out the doctrinal content of this miracle.

It is worth saying one more time that I do not believe this miracle, rightfully interpreted, is vindicatory of Coptic Orthodoxy. It seems clear that even if you were a 1970s Coptic with no knowledge of any other vindicatory miracles that you could figure this out by the simple fact that all these different religious traditions find it consistent with their worldview.

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Conclusion

The apparitions of Zeitoun, Assiut, and Warraq are not vindicatory of Coptic Orthodoxy. Properly understood, they do not offer a serious internal critique of the argument for Catholicism from miracles. The density of documented Catholic apparitions and miracles with doctrinal content also strongly outweighs and disproves any other denominations’ claims to miracle exclusivity.

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Introduction

Ethan Muse’s five-hour interview with Matt Fradd is a sight to behold: a rigorous, detailed, and entertaining defense of three Catholic miracle claims that, in Ethan’s mind, are clear demonstrations of Catholic claims about being the true religion and true Church. I agree, and I strongly recommend a full listen through of the podcast. Yet, Arthur Greenwood, an interesting Anglican history/philosophy YouTuber, has a different perspective. His argument, unlike those of skeptics like Scott Alexander or Sean Luke, does not center on providing a materialist or demonic account of Fatima, Padre Pio, and the Eucharistic miracle at Lanciano. Rather, he accepts the miracles as evidence for Christianity and nothing more:

Note - I used AI to procure a transcript of the video so I didn’t need to type it up by hand. I manually removed “uh” and “uhm” and cleaned up his sentences somewhat for readability. I do not substantially change any statement he makes in the video.

Greenwood’s argument, as I understand it, is that these miracles do not validate Catholicism, and that God had other independently motivated reasons for causing these miracles to occur in Catholic contexts. Now Greenwood does agree that these miracles would invalidate a certain kind of low church Protestantism, one that is anti-Catholic:

In other words, these miracles invalidate a certain class of anti-Catholic evangelicals, but cannot validate Catholicism against a pro-Marian, pro-rosary, semi-pro-Pope kind of Anglican. What is the Catholic to say in response to this?

The answer I will come to at the end of this article can be summarized as such:

This answer will help us understand the question posed by another great creator, Caleb Jackson.

Here, Caleb presents the resurrection of Daniel Ekechukwu as a kind of tu quoque, though I hardly think he is being fallacious. He poses a serious question: might there be other vindicatory miracles among other religions? If so, what do we do to adjudicate?

Now that I have reached the end of this lengthy introduction, I will address Arthur and Caleb in turn, and hopefully both answers will play off of one another in a way that gives a good heuristic for thinking about miracle claims and vindicatory miracles.

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Miracles and Vindicatory Miracles

The primary distinction which must be established first is the distinction between what we might call an “ordinary miracle” and a “vindicatory miracle”. Christians should all accept that God expresses a kind of common love to all creatures, one that permits him to do miraculous healings and other wonders in a variety of different contexts. In Question 178, Article 2 of the Secunda Secundæ Partis, St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

In this way, we see that God can perform miracles in context where there is recognition of Christ and the true faith. Therefore, God rewards this recognition of truth with a miracle, but does not affirm other actions or beliefs of the individual who receives the miracle. If all miracles vindicated the person who received them, then it would become impossible to distinguish the true Church from a false one, something which God obviously doesn’t want.

But sometimes, God does want to vindicate someone and he does use miracles to do it. Thus Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 12:12:

So Paul can vindicate his own apostolic authority via miracles. By what means can we distinguish these vindicatory miracles from non-vindicatory ones? Aquinas answers this in Article 1 of the same question:

On Aquinas’ account, God validates the words of his messengers with prophecies. And this is shown in the Biblical account of miracles as well. Deuteronomy 18 records:

So if a prophet (a) speaks in the name of the Lord and (b) speaks a word that comes to pass or comes true (prophecy), that is a prophet who can be trusted. This is especially important for the validation of Jesus as the prophet like Moses, and Jesus himself employs these criteria in dealing with the Jews who doubted him:

In sum, an ordinary miracle can be distinguished from a vindicatory miracle inasmuch as ordinary miracles affirm basic truths of shared Christian faith (the existence of the one God, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, or the healing power of the Holy Spirit) while vindicatory miracles affirm a deeper doctrinal message (where the true Church is, devotion to Mary, theology of communion). In this case, we would expect (and do find) miracles all over the broad spectrum of Christian denominations. But we would only expect to find vindicatory miracles in one denomination in particular. In a certain sense, all miracles are vindicatory of something doctrinal, but our concerns for this article are those miracles which pertain to disputed Christian doctrine.

To be clear here, I am making a couple of assumptions in my reasoning. First, I am assuming that when the Bible provides certain criteria for discerning true messengers of God, these criteria are true. I am also assuming that all of the miracles I discuss are authentic: not naturally explicable and not demonic. Since all of the miracles mentioned here pertain to proclaiming Jesus, we can assume (for the time being) we are not dealing with demonic activity.1 Finally, I am assuming some kind of “mere Christianity” is true, probably best represented in the Nicene Creed.

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Greenwood’s Errors

With these preliminary definitions in place, we can now respond to Arthur’s video. In short, Arthur (without attributing ill intent) seems to almost completely ignore the vindicatory nature of these miracles. He does address it at some level, asking rhetorically:

Ironically, it seems it is Arthur here who is committing a kind of false dichotomy. He insists that the Evangelicals and Catholics are the ones who assume there is a sharp line between Protestant and Catholic distinctives about the Pope. But he is the one who does so in assuming that either Mary would be entirely positive about the Pope, or entirely negative. This is an incomplete analysis. Instead we must ask: are the miracles which occurred at Fatima, at Lanciano, and to Padre Pio vindicatory of something other than the shared faith of Anglicans and Catholics?

Fatima

As has been shown in the preceding section, signs can accompany teaching to affirm the teachings given. In the case of Fatima, there are four specific “teachings” which we care about for the sake of this investigation: the vision of the angel, and the three secrets2 revealed by Mary to the shepherd children at Fatima. Remember that we are taking these as given, as this is an internal critique of Arthur’s view. The text of the secrets can be found here, the vision of the angel can be found in Sister Lucia’s memoir here. I assume that the reader has some familiarity with Fatima, if they do not I recommend them to listen to the Ethan Muse interview first.

The Vision of the Angel

The first apparition the children experienced was not of Mary but of an angel. This angel instructs the children to repeat a prayer which affirms the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, specifically in what appears to be an affirmation of transubstantiation. We see that the host is bleeding, implying a physicality of Christ’s blood present in and with it. We observe that the angel and the children worship the host and chalice, kneeling before it. We also observe our first affirmation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which I will return to later.

We read that after the prayers are said by the children:

The fact that this is occurring in a specifically Catholic context, and the angel is affirming to Catholic children that they are receiving the Body and Blood without qualification, can only be taken to imply that the angel is teaching transubstantiation. The angel specifically tells the children to make reparation for “their crimes” (men’s sin) through reception of the Eucharist.

By the time of even the first apparition, the children are given divine confirmation of transubstantiation, Eucharistic Adoration, the Immaculate Conception, and reparation for sin via the Eucharist. These are all clearly Catholic distinctives, and many are outright denied by the 39 Articles.

The First and Second Secret

The First Secret involved showing the children a vision of hell. I have cut the recounting of this for length. After the vision, Mary gave the Second Secret to the children. Sister Lucia writes:

Within these apparitions, we see several doctrines clearly established: intercession of the saints (specifically Mary appearing and asking for prayers for her intercession), the Immaculate Heart, the first Saturday devotion, and the good of Eastern Orthodox conversion to Catholicism, and the Papacy being connected with the true Church. Of course, Mary does not explicitly exposit the teachings of Vatican I, but she does associate “the Holy Father” with “the Church.” Towards the end, she says that Russia (if her requests are not heeded) will spread war and persecutions of the Church. What are these wars and persecutions?

So the persecution of the Church will involve the suffering of the Holy Father, the Pope. That seems to pretty clearly imply the Holy Father is the leader of the Church. Further evidence of this is what she says will happen if the Holy Father consecrates Russia to her Immaculate Heart:

Russia will be converted. Converted to what? The meaning of the text can only make sense if the conversion is to Catholicism. Notice that Our Lady says this conversion will occur whether or not Russia spreads her errors (communist uprising). Therefore the conversion is not to apostolic Christianity generally but to Catholicism specifically.

The Third Secret

Regardless of the fulfillment of this prophecy (Sister Lucia and John Paul II both agree that the assassination attempt on John Paul II did fulfill the prophecy), we see here again a particular concern with the Pope. We also see concern with men and women in the religious life. Once again, there seems to be a very explicit teaching of the Pope as representative of the whole church. Notice that it is the Pope who is shot first, and then after him other members of the clergy, then those in religious life, then various lay people. Once again, we don’t see explicit affirmation of Vatican I. But we do see a very positive outlook on the Pope and what obviously is a vision of him being representative of the whole Church.

Do the Apparitions Contradict Anglicanism?

One of the difficulties I have encountered in writing this article is that defining “Anglicanism” is a rather difficult task. It was actually a surprise when I found out that the Church of England no longer requires adherence to the 39 Articles, the distinctive Anglican text of the reformation. Stranger still, members of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON, a hilarious acronym), affirm in their Jerusalem Statement that “We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today,” while also affirming that “while acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury.” Putting aside the obvious apologetic difficulties in defending a church where members cannot even agree if your founding documents are binding on members, and putting aside the difficulties in even defining Anglicanism if those self-identified Anglicans cannot even agree if recognition of the Archbishop of Canterbury is a necessary feature of Anglican identity, we can still use the apparitions to dispute core teachings of Anglicanism.

To do so, I will distinguish between Confessional and Jurisdictional Anglicanism, and show how Fatima contradicts both. Now I am sure that there is some Anglican out there who will insist they are a part of an Anglican Church which meets neither the criteria for Confessional or Jurisdictional Anglicanism. But in truth, I think the arguments I present here should cause any Anglican who does not submit to Rome to doubt their current church membership. Greenwood himself seems to adhere to a kind of Jurisdictional Anglicanism.

Confessional Anglicanism

I will define Confessional Anglicanism as Anglicanism which requires adherence to the 39 articles. Here, Fatima stands in direct contradiction to the 39 articles.

The first apparition presents the angel and the children adoring the Eucharist, which is presented in a transubstantiated form. The angel affirms that the Eucharist is truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ and tells the children to offer it up and receive it in reparation for sin.

This runs directly contrary to Anglican distinctives presented in the 39 Articles, specifically article XXV:

And article XXVIII:

Contrary to the 39 Articles, we see the Eucharist being gazed upon, lifted up, worshipped, and presented in an entirely physical way.

This is what the children would have understood it as. Furthermore, we see yet another contradiction, this time with article XXXI:

Once again, the angel tells the children to offer and receive the Eucharist as reparation for sinners. There is direct contradiction here.

Therefore, one cannot affirm the truth of the 39 Articles and also the revelations of Fatima. There is too much explicit contradiction in the nature of the Eucharist taught and the language of reparation used.

Jurisdictional Anglicanism

Jurisdictional Anglicanism is membership in a church which descends from the English Reformation and the Church of England, practices in the Prayer Book tradition, and is in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. In addressing such a position, we must take the fundamental view that God desires, as a function of his permissive will, every man to know what church is the true church. This entails that God desires us to know what the proper Church structure is, who has authority over his Church.

So it should be a surprise if Jurisdictional Anglicanism is true that God’s messengers at Fatima seem incredibly concerned with the actions of the Pope, specifically that he would consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a doctrine only dogmatically taught in one Church. To be more clear, a crucial disagreement Arthur says he has with Catholicism is its teaching about papal infallibility:

And yet, we see that one of the major things that the Pope has defined ex cathedra is the Immaculate Conception by Blessed Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus. Now is it technically possible that the Pope just so happened to be correct on the Immaculate Conception (even though no other Church teaches it dogmatically), and that Mary is simply affirming the same doctrine even though the Pope wasn’t speaking infallibly when he defined it? Sure. But even in the best case scenario for the Anglican, it would need to be a huge evidential chip in favor of the Catholic position. Another evidential chip is that, as I showed earlier, the Third Secret gives a kind of “representativeness” to the Pope. He dies first, followed by the other bishops, priests, religious, and then laity. There is an implied hierarchy in the deaths, one that seems to reflect the structure of the Catholic Church. Again, is it possible that God chose to depict the vision in this way for entirely unrelated reasons? Certainly. But at a certain point, too many evidential chips on one side must outweigh personal intellectual objections to Catholic ecclesiology.

As I already pointed out, the conditional prophecy given by Mary teaches that if the Pope consecrates Russia (at that point, an Eastern Orthodox country) to the Immaculate Heart, then Russia will convert. This condition is given regardless of if Russia has spread its errors at the time of the consecration. Now, it seems strange that God would be concerned, on any form of Anglicanism, with making an Eastern Orthodox country Catholic. Isn’t any Christian group, given the very ecumenical view of the Anglicans, a good thing for God to desire? Why does he want their Catholicity? If Catholicism is false, it seems impossible that God could actively promise more converts to a false church as a reward for that false church’s obedience. To me, this is more than an evidential chip. This is proof of Catholicism's truth.

I can anticipate one counter objection to this argument, which is that God frequently gives visions to Muslims of Jesus, and those Muslims find their way into the Church through Protestant missionaries who God tells them to go see. But I am unaware of any visionary experience a Muslim has had in which God affirms the truth of a protestant denomination or theology. God could indeed deign it better for a Muslim to become Protestant than to stay Muslim, but this would only be done through revelations of those basic truths of the shared Christian faith.

Fatima In Sum

The angel and Our Lady present a number of Catholic doctrines to the children, including a dogma infallibly declared by the Pope, emphasis of the truth of transubstantiation, and affirmation of the goodness of Eastern Orthodox conversion to Catholicism. This is insurmountable vindicatory evidence of Catholicism over other Christian sects.

Padre Pio

I lack the time and space to go into Padre Pio’s miracles in much depth here. Once again, I would refer interested listeners to the Pints interview and to Ethan Muse’s excellent article on the topic, some of which I quote from here. Padre Pio was not a prophet like the Fatima seers, but did have a strong commitment to Catholic doctrine. As Muse puts it:

Padre Pio also received many visions over the course of his life, many of which implicitly or explicitly affirm Catholic doctrines. Muse continues:

Receiving a vision from God that positively identifies Christ’s representative on earth and reveals supernatural insight about his mental state is a strong evidential chip towards Catholicism. Why did Pio not receive similar visions about the Archbishop of Canterbury?

It is also striking that God never gave Pio any instructions to be more ecumenical or accommodating given the Jurisdictional Anglican account of denominations not mattering much. Muse brings up a story in which Pio strongly encourages an Eastern Orthodox woman to convert or she will go to Hell:

Pio’s life and visions should be very surprising on Greenwood’s view.

On the Confessional Anglican view, the facts of Pio’s life become much more damaging evidentially. For instance, the 39 Articles reject confession as a sacrament ordained by Christ:

Yet as Muse points out:

So God, in conjunction with Pio’s rebuke of the sinner for not believing in confession as a Sacrament in the Catholic sense, is revealing to Pio sins which could not be known by Pio naturally.

The 39 Articles also reject purgatory:

But as Muse recounts:

In short, one cannot believe Pio is a visionary while holding to the 39 Articles, and they would have a very hard time rejecting Catholicism given the visions he had and the activity he engaged in throughout his life.

Lanciano

Here, I will keep my discussion brief. On the Confessional Anglican view, Lanciano stands in direct contradiction to the 39 Articles, as I have already shown that they deny transubstantiation outright. As for Jurisdictional Anglicanism, I concur with Muse that it is very strange that God has chosen to cluster Eucharistic miracles in the Catholic Church. As Muse puts it:

In truth, we do not observe Anglican eucharistic miracles of comparable quality or veracity, either in high or low church anglican contexts. Given the importance of the Eucharist, you would think God would desire to foster greater Eucharistic devotion among those who don’t believe in transubstantiation, but instead he chooses to only make those miracles occur among those whose churches already affirm the nature of transubstantiation.

The only miracle I can find that comes close (and the one Sean Luke brings up in his debate with Ethan), is the alleged miracle at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, where the host is said to have miraculously glowed, as seen in the photo below:

But as can be easily seen in this image, there are lights of a similar brightness which appear around the cross. These lights correspond with other images of the church that show there are round, circular lights above the altar:

The lack of comparable, verifiable Eucharistic miracles among those who affirm the real presence is striking, and provides another strong evidential chip for Catholicism.

Greenwood’s Alternative Account

Putting aside those miracles for which there seems to be a clear vindicatory element, it is also strange that there are so many more documented miracles in the Catholic Church over other churches. Why is this? Greenwood provides three reasons:

So the three explanations given are 1) more piety among Catholics than Anglicans, 2) more Catholics than Anglicans, and 3) lack of documentation among Anglicans. In response, I would argue that all three of these features of Catholicism are themselves motives of credibility which vindicate Catholic claims.

More Piety?

It is difficult to measure “piety” among competing Christian groups. However, even if Catholics are more pious than Anglicans, this would not show why Catholics seem to have more miracles of a vindicatory/message kind than any other Christian groups. Many Christian groups have had healings, but I am unaware of a single documented non-Catholic group having documented visionary experiences like the ones described at Fatima or by Padre Pio. This is in spite of the fact that there are many local denominations of pentecostals and charismatics which report alleged miracles all the time. Why are Catholics getting miracles of this particular vindicatory nature?

Furthermore, if Greenwood is right in assuming that Catholics are, on the whole, more pious (strangely, I think he is more eager to admit this than I am), this itself would serve as a motive of credibility to Catholicism. If I am trying to decide whether a potentially vindicatory miracle gives more credibility to two groups which claim it is vindicatory of their own position, the fact that one group is more pious and devout (especially as a result of that miracle) seems to be strong evidence that it is that group which is being vindicated.

More Catholics?

It is true that if God was just distributing miracles on a “share of Christian population” based system, we would expect to see more miracles in Catholic contexts since there are more Catholics than non-Catholics. But this objection, once again, ignores the distinction in the kind of miracles we are talking about. It isn’t just that Catholics are getting a bunch of healing miracles from praying for the intercession of the saints and to God, it is that we are the only Church with medically documented Eucharistic miracles. If God didn’t care about denominations much, why would he not create similar miracles, even in a smaller proportion, among non-Catholics? Non-Catholics are 50% of the Christian population, and yet the distribution of scientifically documented Eucharistic miracles are several to zero Catholics vs non-Catholics.

And again, the fact that there are so many more Catholics than other Christian groups is a motive of credibility for Catholicism. We have more adequately fulfilled the great commission than any other group. So if you were trying to decide if a vindicatory miracle is vindicatory of a particular denomination, the fact that it is happening in the denomination with loads and loads of faithful members is a strong witness to God being with that Church in a particular way.

Better Documentation?

It is certainly true that there is better documentation by Catholics than non-Catholics of our miracles, but as was already pointed out by Ethan Muse, this is simply further vindication of Catholicism:

In short, God is provident over the vindication of his own miracles. If, as Greenwood claimed, God didn’t care about denomination, it is quite strange that he has placed all of the extraordinary, scientifically inexplicable, and message-based miracles in the Catholic Church.

Summing Up

Greenwood’s response fails to distinguish between the different degrees of vindication among miracles. While every Christian denomination has likely had a healing miracle in the name of Jesus at some point, the Catholic Church is the only denomination3 to have documented miracles associated with a divine messenger that preaches the denomination’s doctrines and truth associated with it. At worst, the quality and quantity of Catholic miracle claims provide an incredibly strong evidentiary weight for the Church’s truth, one that, when weighed against our own ability to sort out difficult theological topics like papal infallibility, should provide us with very strong reasons to become Catholic.

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Caleb Jackson and Daniel Ekechukwu

The resurrection of Daniel Ekechukwu (hereafter just Daniel) is genuinely crazy. I recommend you all go read Caleb’s article, as I found it to be very compelling. For the sake of this article, I will assume that everything recounted in the case is true. Daniel really did die, receive a vision of heaven and hell, and was resurrected after being declared dead by multiple doctors and being embalmed. Once again, this case is insane and seems genuinely inexplicable on naturalism. Go check it out.

That said, is there a vindicatory element to this miracle? There is an associated message, which is Daniel’s vision, recorded here. The vision is quite lengthy, so I will summarize the vision, and I encourage readers to go fact check it for themselves. Here are the messages communicated to Daniel:

(1) There is a heaven and hell, and the hell seems consistent with eternal conscious torment. Those in hell are subjected to Dante-style ironic punishments. Heaven is described as worship of God in a beautiful city, and there is a mansion awaiting believers after the second coming which is of an inexplicable nature, lacking width or height.

(2) Faith in Christ and obedience to his commands is necessary for salvation. Daniel is specifically told by the angel that he would have been sent to hell for speaking angry words to and not forgiving his wife, and insists that Daniel’s prayers at his death for forgiveness were insufficient because he had not forgiven his wife.

(3) Daniel is told that God is sending him back to testify to the existence of hell and the need for repentance. Daniel is then shown a man who he comes to recognize as pentecostal German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, who the angel tells Daniel will help him spread the gospel.

Most objections to this account which I have seen are to (i) the sin which Daniel is charged with being enough to send him to hell and (ii) the idea of post-mortem repentance aka a denial of particular judgment. However, (i) is entirely consistent with the Catholic theology of mortal sin and justification via faith formed by charity. Daniel persisted in his unforgiveness of his wife and had plans to “put her in her place” after she had slapped him in an earlier argument. It is entirely consistent with Catholic teaching to say this constitutes mortal sin. I deny that (ii) is what is occurring here. Based on the account I have read, it appears God was already planning to send Daniel back to earth prior to any repentance on Daniel’s part. This is consistent with events such as the resurrection of Lazarus. God can make extraordinary events such as double-death occur without violating the ordinary principle of particular judgment.

The much bigger issue, in my eyes, is the command given to Daniel before he is resurrected. The angel tells Daniel that he is to go spread the gospel of salvation with Reinhard Bonnke. Caleb Jackson rightly notes that this is problematic for Catholics who appeal to vindicatory miracles:

I will admit that I do not have a perfect answer to this question. To answer it, I will draw out a draft of an objection and welcome further pressing of the data on my draft.

I begin by noting that God does not have an obligation to reveal every truth of the faith, even to those who have visions of heaven. Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel all received visions of heaven without gaining particular knowledge (name, place, time) of who the Christ was to be. They also did not receive any of the gospel Christ established in the Sermon on the Mount.

Therefore, we do not need to anticipate that Daniel would receive every teaching necessary for his own salvation. But why did the angel not emphasize to him the importance of finding the right church, given the teaching of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus? I agree this is a difficulty. But we do see Daniel being instructed on the extreme importance of Christ’s commands. On the Catholic view, this would include submission to Christ’s church. Daniel’s vision seems particularly concerned with communicating the existence of hell:

Why did the Angel show Daniel a vision of Bonnke? To me, this is on par with Muslims who receive visions of Jesus, and are even sometimes instructed to go and find a Protestant pastor, such as the story told here. God gives preference to repentance and preaching of Christ over the absence of such practice.

We also must be careful. What was the particular language of the angel? This report is secondhand and narratively given, not word for word recounted. Is it possible the angel told Daniel to simply “preach Jesus” or something else of a general nature? The Fatima seers are firsthand and give several consistent accounts of God’s desire for the Holy Father to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart for Russia to convert. People who encountered Padre Pio in confession are firsthand, Lancino has precise medical documentation. Comparatively, the exact language of the vision seems to be at some odds.

Lastly, on the visions of the kind of punishment of hell and the nature of heaven, we should remember that God can use images of himself in heaven which are comprehensible by human eyes. These images need not be perfectly reflective of the actual nature of the thing seen. This is consistent with the prophets seeing God as a man, even though he is not. We also don’t need to expect Daniel to see every facet of the afterlife. Daniel does not see purgatory, but he also does not see the saint’s prayers “rising like incense” as described in Revelation. Perhaps God simply wanted to emphasize the dichotomy between heaven and hell, which is affirmed by Catholics.

I grant that this vision has some elements that are difficult for Catholics, but I do not believe they are insurmountable, especially when placed besides the incredible number of vindicatory Catholic miracles. I would lastly remind readers of Christ’s words to his disciples who expressed concern about those doing mighty signs in Jesus’ name:

Conclusion

Catholic miracles have a unique vindicatory element which cannot be accounted for under other Christian theologies. The one counter example, the resurrection of Daniel Ekechukwu, provides difficulties that are not insurmountable given the recounting of the vision as we have it. At worst, we must let evidential chips fall where they may, in which case we find the quantity, quality, and vindicatory nature of Catholic miracles to be a staggering weight under which other theological systems must collapse.

Saint Joseph of Cupertino is an enigma begging for deciphering. He was unique in so many ways and so impossibly otherworldly as to defy rational analy­sis, and his mysticism so extreme as to defy classification.

- Carlos Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible Chp 4, PG 136

Introduction

St. Joseph of Cupertino1 is known for two things: being incredibly dim-witted, and flying. The 17th century mystic is a popular saint of the Catholic Church, especially among the test-taking aged of whom he is a patron. But is there adequate evidence to support his flight? This article presents three alternative accounts of his flight: (1) a naturalistic account, (2) a demonic account, and (3) a miraculous account. In the end, I conclude that based upon an extensive review of every scholarly source I could get my hands on, the miraculous account is the best explanation of the evidence from St. Joseph’s life, numerous witness accounts, and the failure of explanations (2) and (3).

A Note on Sources

I construct my biography from several sources, mainly:

1. Angelino Pastrovicchi’s Biography

2. Catholic Encyclopedia

3. Eric Dingwall’s Some Human Oddities

4. Michael Grosso’s The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation

I source most of my levitation claims from these modern sources:

1. Michael Grosso’s The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation

2. Douglas Scott Rogo’s Miracles: A Parascientific Inquiry Into Wondrous Phenomena

3. Rev. Robert D. Smith’s Comparative Miracles

4. Eric Dingwall’s Some Human Oddities

5. Carlos Eire’s They Flew: A History of the Impossible

6. Olivier Leroy’s Levitation: An Examination of the Evidence and Explanations

7. Herbert Thurston’s Physical Phenomena of Mysticism

The modern sources make use of the original documentary research from the following authors:

1. Angelo Pastrovicchi’s 1753 Compendio della vita, virtù e miracoli del beato Giuseppe da Copertino. An English translation is available here.

2. Domenico Bernino’s 1722 Vita del Venerabile Padre Fr. Giuseppe da Copertino de’ Minori Conventuali. Bernino claims to have personally witnessed an ecstacy from Cupertino.

3. Gustavo Parisciani’s 1963 San Giuseppe Da Copertino: Alla Luce dei Nuovi Documenti, for which I can only obtain an Companion Devotional Booklet.

4. Roberto Nuti’s 1678 Vita del Servo di Dio Fr. Giuseppe da Copertino, dell’Ordine de’Minori Conventuali. Nuti was Joseph’s confessor, and assembled a very early biographical account of his life.

5. The Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum, accessible via the ProQuest database. In cases where I quote this directly, I am using Claude Opus 4.8 to translate the Latin.

A Brief Biography

Note - I list some accusations against Joseph within this biography without comment. I will raise the accusations again during my examinations of the possible accounts.

On June 17th, 1603, Joseph was born in a stable in Cupertino, Italy. His father had run into trouble with creditors on account of his generosity and had fled to find refuge in a Church. His mother, Francesca Panara, was incredibly strict with him in his early years, as St. Joseph was prone to spirited anger. Early in his life, he enjoyed visiting churches and constructed a small altar in his home where he would frequently pray. At age eight, he began experiencing religious ecstasies. During these ecstasies, he would frequently sit with his mouth agape, staring up into the sky.

During his upbringing, Joseph demonstrated remarkable spiritual fruit. He would regularly fast, abstain from meat, wear hair shirts, frequently attend and serve at Mass, and was exceptionally prayerful. His lifestyle took a toll on his body and he developed ulcers which spread across his body, confining him to bed. Some biographers report that he was miraculously healed by a hermit, though I obviously cannot directly confirm this account. What is agreed on and very plausible is that confinement to bed caused him to seriously lag in terms of motor development.

At 17, he attempted to join the Order of the Friars Minor Conventuals, but was rejected by uncles, members of the Order who thought he was too mentally inept to join the order. He then entered a Capuchin monastery as a lay brother, but was dismissed for being too absent minded and prone to fits of ecstasy which prevented him from performing his duties. Finally, Joseph was received as a third order member of the Order of Conventuals, where he was given the lowly task of taking care of a donkey. In spite of the number of rejections which he had received, he continued to practice remarkable devotion to God in prolonged fasting, sleeping on wooden boards, and wearing his hair shirt.

He was eventually received as a cleric and took the name Joseph Maria. In spite of being extremely unintelligent, the Bishop chose to waive his examination of him, due to being called away for urgent business. Joseph was ordained on March 28th, 1628. He stuck to his practicing rigorous physical discipline. He was frequently prone to outbursts of anger, especially at those who blasphemed or were practicing magic. Grosso reports that this anger led him to, on one occasion, attack a man for blaspheming God.

Once he was ordained, reports of his levitation emerged along with other miracles. A religious superior, Father Antonio, took him with him on visits to convents and monasteries in the area, where he (as recorded by Grosso) wrote:

Joseph was reportedly very annoyed at being made a spectacle. However, Fr. Antonio reported that Joseph had great virtue, and brought him as an example of such virtue. These events, and growing popularity of Joseph, caught the eye of the inquisition, and he became the target of several church authorities who were distrustful of his character and miracles. In short, he was accused of false piety. What is noteworthy, however, is that the inquisitors did not suspect him of staging his levitation. They were concerned that he was under possession or that he was seeking to draw attention to himself.

Joseph was declared innocent of all charges by the inquisition in Naples, in spite of heavy opposition. However, he was later moved to Assisi to be in isolation and prevent further disturbances from his feats. Interestingly, his arrival was met by hostility from Fr. Antonio. Antonio was stationed there as the custodian (think Church warden) and began mistreating him. But Antonio himself was given a warning by the inquisition for harshly mistreating Joseph. According to Grosso, when asked to comment on Joseph by Rome, Antonio replied “I can say nothing except he was a saint who went into ecstasy continually and was adored by everybody.” This is in sharp contrast to the insults he laid on Joseph at Assisi, where he called him a “hypocrite and flighty as a puppet, mask of sanctity, liar and downright crazy.”

After nine years in Assisi, Pope Innocent X decided to reexamine the charges brought in Naples against Joseph due to his increasing fame. He was confined in a cell in Pietrarubbia, but began attracting even greater attention from people who came to see him. After three months, he was moved to a hermitage in Fossombrone. New miracles occurred there too, and more and more pilgrims flocked to see Joseph. In May of 1656, Alexander VII became pope. He sent Joseph to Osimo after declaring that “one Saint Francis of Assisi was enough” (Grosso). Grosso records that when Joseph was outside the walls of Osimo, he “emitted his characteristic prelevitational shriek, and flew from the porch to the top of an almond tree, a distance of fifteen yards.” Grosso calls this event “presumably well-witnessed.” Strict isolation was placed on Joseph there, and he lived out the last six years of his life in near complete solitude. Interestingly, Grosso records that during these last six years, the number of ecstasies and raptures he had increased in spite of illness. Father Maccatelli, a priest at Osimo, testified in Apostolic court that:

Joseph died on September 18th, 1663.

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Levitation Reports

Though many miracles were attributed to Joseph throughout his lifetime, I will focus on the levitations exclusively, since they are the most well attested and researched in the scholarly literature.

The astounding thing about St. Joseph is not simply that he was reported to levitate. This is recorded for a large number of Saints, per Olivier Leroy. What is unique about Joseph’s levitations is their quality and quantity. Carlos Eire, who has produced the most recent book on Joseph’s life and miracles, writes:

What is even more astonishing is the vast number of witnesses to his levitations, and the nature of those witnesses. Eire recounts:

Michael Grosso, another recent scholar of Cupertino, agrees:

Even one of Joseph’s skeptics, Rev. Robert D. Smith, admits in his book Comparative Miracles that:

As a last point on this, Eire says that:

The other aspect of these levitations which is of significant importance is their closeness to the reported events themselves. Unlike many hagiographical accounts which develop well over a hundred years after the reported miracles, the witnesses to Joseph’s miracles were the ones who testified to them. In the case of some of these miracles, the witnesses are testifying just a couple years after they allegedly saw Joseph levitate.

With this framework in mind, let’s turn to just a few of Joseph’s reported levitations.

Levitation Before Johann Friedrich

One exceptional account that is of Duke Johann Friedrich, a German Lutheran who specifically requested to meet Joseph at Assisi. Eire recounts that as Joseph was saying Mass, the following events occurred:

These events confused the Duke, and Joseph’s explanation was that since heretics with hard hearts had visited the chapel, the host became too hard to break. The following day, another miracle occurred:

Here, Joseph’s miracle is clearly given as a motive of credibility for Friedrich and his compatriots. The events caused Friedrich to renounce his Lutheran faith and become Catholic, which created a significant stir in Germany. Interestingly, Friedrich was a close acquaintance with the Lutheran philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz offers testimony of Friedrich’s conversion, writing:2

Eire’s recounting of events is affirmed based on the original source work done by Bernino and Parisciani. This event is very commonly recounted among the sources I draw from.

Flight Before the Spanish Ambassador

In 1645, the Spanish Ambassador to the Papal Court and High Admiral of Castile, Juan Alfonso Henriquez de Cabrera, visited Joseph in his monastic cell. Herbert Thurston, in the 1952 Physical Phenomena of Mysticism recounts:

As for the nature of the testimony of this event, Thurston writes:

Olivier Leroy, in his 1928 book on levitation, gives a similar account of the events, based on the citations of Bernino:

This story is well attested amongst the biographies I source from, and clearly comes from firsthand testimony of the ambassador, his wife, and the rest of the party who were present.

Flight Before the Pope

British anthropologist Eric Dingwall records in his book Human Oddities that Joseph levitated when he was called before the Pope Urban VIII and the inquisition in Rome:

Dingwall and Leroy both describe this account and cite Bernino as their source. Bernino almost certainly got it from the beatification processes of Assisi, as this is where the Acta Sanctorum’s 1755 documentation of Joseph’s life says their information is from. In the case of the Acta, they can cite the folio which the story is included in, as well as the name of the Father-General who witnessed the event. We would expect this testimony to emerge from Assisi, as this is where Joseph was living at the time he was called to Rome.

Levitation and Healing of Balthasar Rossi

One particularly unique levitation is the assisted levitation of Balthasar Rossi at the monastery in Assisi. Rossi was a noble who was suffering from some sort of mental issue. Leroy states:

Leroy sources the story from Bernino, and the Acta adds that that Rossi was healed as a result of the flight. Eire also recounts the story and notes that Pastrovicchi also attests to it. Once again, this testimony comes out of the processes at Assisi, which means the story likely emerged from there.

Flight Outside of Osimo

When Joseph was being moved to Osimo, a miracle occurred as he was outside the city. Dingwall records the following from Bernino and the Acta:

The “Holy House” is a reference to the Holy House of Loreto, a different miracle in the Catholic tradition which we will leave aside for the purposes of this article. Grosso gives a similar testimony, drawing his story from Pastrovicchi:

Leroy, drawing from the Acta Sanctorum:

The Acta cite this story as being preserved in the Apostolic Process of Osimo, another instance of a story emerging from a place where Joseph lived.

Levitation in His Last Hours

Francesco Pierpaolo was Joseph’s surgeon on Joseph’s deathbed at Osimo. According to Grosso drawing on Bernino, he deposed that he saw Joseph levitate four times:

This account is particularly incredible for several reasons. First, it is very likely firsthand testimony taken from the depositions at Osimo, as confirmed by the Acta. Second, the surgeon can be taken as a reliable witness, not only because he would be a man of science trained in medicine (less likely to be duped by simple tricks), but because, third, he recounts an embarrassing story that is recorded in the Acta:

This same detail of sin being revealed to the surgeon is affirmed by Eire, drawing on Pastrovicchi. Fourth and finally, this testimony is very close chronologically to the events described, likely one of the closest accounts we have.

The Naturalistic Account

Given these stories which I have just laid out, what would a skeptic, someone who doubts the existence of miracles, or who has some other reason to deny the miracles of Joseph, have to say about the matter?

There are two primary skeptical accounts which are given, one from the aforementioned Rev. Robert D. Smith in 1965, and one from Joe Nickell, a writer for Skeptical Inquirer.

Smith has roughly five objections. I will state the objection and then give an answer before proceeding to the next objection.

1. The main two biographies which we source from, Bernino and Pastrovicchi, drew from records of the inquest. But the record of the canonization processes are extremely rare, and no one who has recently studied the question thoroughly has used the original documents in their investigation.

   Response: Smith is actually incorrect in stating this, though he can’t be faulted. Gustavo Parisciani actually took up this very task and published his work in 1963, drawing on new witnesses which were unknown to the literature at the time of Smith’s writing. And yet, he does not significantly undermine any stories which we have access to. In fact, he is cited frequently in Eire’s book, which very positively affirms Joseph's levitations. The reason Smith is unaware of this work is that it was published by a small Italian publishing house, and never received an English translation.

2. The later biographies indicate that there are issues in the original depositions and their transmission, evidenced by discrepancies between the witnesses.

   The example Smith gives of contradictory testimony is another recorded levitation that I did not mention. In the story, Joseph assists farmers in carrying large wooden crosses and placing them in pre-dug holes by carrying them while flying. The issue with the story is that Pastrovicchi says Joseph flew fifteen paces, while Bernino says he rose eighty paces. I agree this casts doubt on the witness testimony for this specific case, but would make two specific counterpoints:

   1. This testimony at the very least shows a story of Joseph levitating at a certain height. Perhaps the eighty paces is a wild exaggeration that developed later, but there is some preserved story in particular that both stories seem to be drawing from.

   2. The difference of fifteen paces and eighty paces is a lot, but this is not the difference recorded by most stories. In most stories, the difference is of a few feet, exactly what we would expect of a set of independent witnesses trying to remember a prior event. They all remember that Joseph flew, but can’t pin down exactly how many feet.

3. There is a large time lag for some of the earliest accounts.

   This is true, and likely the biggest reason to doubt some of the testimony. However, it cannot account for the widespread nature of these accounts, both in span of time and geography. If this was simply a legend that developed after Joseph’s death among the townsfolk, why did it spread so far, and specifically to other towns Joseph visited? How did it arise in the first place? Even if the accounts are questionably reliable in the details, they still preserve levitation as a feature of Joseph’s life, a strange fact if he never levitated at all. Finally, while we may forget small details and days of our lives over time, we tend not to forget large, incredible events. An obvious example of a large incredible event we would not forget is levitation.

4. There are reasons to believe Joseph may have been a gymnast based on descriptions of bounding or leaping by Joseph. This could indicate that some witnesses mistook Joseph’s agility for levitation.

   See my reply to Nickell shortly, as much of his skeptical account relies on this argument. Needless to say, I think it is a very weak argument.

5. Benedict XIV does not seem to explicitly affirm the levitations even though he affirmed the canonizations.

   This is plainly false. Benedict says:

   Whilst I discharged the office of Promotor of the Faith the cause of the Venerable Servant of God, Joseph of Copertino came up for discussion in the Congregation of Sacred Rites, which after my retirement was brought to a favourable conclusion, and in this eye-witnesses of unchallengeable integrity gave evidence of the famous upliftings from the ground and prolonged flights of the aforesaid Servant of God when rapt in ecstasy.

So we see that Smith’s skepticism regarding the timing and credibility of the witnesses is plainly false. But what about St. Joseph’s supposed athletic prowess?

In Skeptical Enquirer Volume 42, No. 4, Joe Nickell lays out a number of explanations for some of Joseph’s miracles. In short, Nickell believes that Joseph was something of an acrobat in a traveling spiritual circus, being moved about Italy by his prelate to dupe poor, dumb peasants into embracing Catholicism. As Nickell writes:

To respond to Nickell, I will first address his framing of the issue, and then turn to point out the laughable absurdities he proposes as explanations for some of Joseph’s flights.

Nickell’s article ascribes two particular traits to Joseph: duplicity and athleticism. Neither is borne out by the accounts we have of Joseph’s life.

Duplicity?

Nickell frequently portrays Joseph as a conman. Though he never establishes this fact from any records of Joseph that we have, he gestures to it by naming two examples of people close to Joseph who seem to have been hostile towards him:

The prelate, Father Antonio, is a complicated man. I address some of these complications in my brief biography. We know that at least one point, he was collaborating with Joseph. Once Joseph reaches Assisi, the abuse begins. What is curious is that the quote given is what Antonio said to Rome, but notice what the quote says. It calls Joseph a saint and adored by all. The particular context of the quote is Joseph’s trials in Rome, where his character was of primary question. If Father Antonio truly doubted the veracity of Joseph’s miracles, why did he not inform Rome that he believed Joseph was lying about his miraculous feats? If anything, this quote strengthens the character of Joseph because it shows that he was morally impenetrable, even to those who were hostile to him.

The second traveling companion simply cannot be used to weigh in either direction of this case. We do not have the original records of the traveling companion leaving. We don’t have his motive. We don’t even know his name. So to use this, when there could be any number of reasons for asking to be dismissed, is just post hoc attacks on Joseph’s character.

To the overall idea that Joseph could be a con man, this idea seems essentially impossible. Joseph, throughout his life, showed little interest in fame. He was obedient to his superiors, moving wherever the Church sent him. He engaged in acts of penance and self-flagellation so great that his superior had to step in and stop him. He slept on wooden boards, fasted frequently, constantly kneeled in prayer, and was by all accounts an incredibly pious priest. He lived a life of humble and obedient virtue, in spite of constant opposition from Church authorities. He was declared innocent by the inquisition after lengthy trials. With all this incredible virtue, and clear belief in the teachings of Jesus and the Catholic Church, why would Joseph engage in consistent lying and deception, something which is always considered a sin by the Catholic Church?

Most tellingly, Joseph’s “devil’s advocate,” Prosper Lambertini, the man tasked with giving every possible reason Joseph should not be beatified, became Pope Benedict XIV, and beatified him. This should be weighted very heavily in favor of Joseph, because Lambertini would have had access to the witnesses accounts directly. He would know about inconsistencies in the testimony. Not only that, but Lambertini was well known for being critically-minded, in particular because he published a lengthy treatise on scientifically examining canonization cases as Benedict XIV. If the man tasked with finding fault in Joseph is the same man who beatified him on account of his virtue and miracles, then it is safe to say Joseph possessed extreme virtue and certainly could not be a con man.

Athletic Prowess?

This objection is leveled by Smith and Nickell, and seems to arise from the fact that in some cases, Joseph is described as leaping and bounding far distances, or hanging on to something as he levitates. But this simply cannot stand up to scrutiny. Joseph was a sickly child, mainly on account of his fasting. As an adult, he fasted often. He had, by Nickell’s own admission, sores on his knees from kneeling so long and so frequently. The idea that Joseph could somehow obtain the athleticism required to dupe hundreds of people, including well educated popes and princes, some of whom were hostile to him, is an utter absurdity. We have no record of Joseph training as an athlete, making any sort of indication of athleticism, or anyone around him claiming he was an athlete explicitly. And, as I will show momentarily, even if Joseph did possess these athletic traits, it simply cannot account for some of his feats.

Fanciful Witnesses?

Part of Nickell’s account must also rely on the suggestibility of the witnesses who saw Joseph levitate. Leaving aside Nickell’s biased view against the intelligence of medieval peasants, it is simply inconceivable that Joseph could have duped the number of people in high office as he did. A Lutheran Duke would be able to distinguish a large leap from flight. Again, note the quality and quantity of the witnesses. The genius that would be required of Joseph to dupe all of these people, when we know from all records of him that he was likely very unintelligent, is simply improbable.

Nickell’s framing, then, fails to establish Joseph as a fraud or athlete, and is too dismissive of the witnesses involved. But what about the specific refutations given by Nickell of Joseph’s feats?

Lutheran Duke

As I showed in the previous section, Joseph’s leap was recorded at five paces, about 12.5 feet. Even leaving aside what position Joseph was in at any point during this event, it is improbable that Joseph set the standing backward jump record, smashing current world record holder Lorenz Wetscher’s eight foot, six inch record. Nickell’s explanation is simply implausible, even if Joseph was crouching to begin the jump.

Of the second levitation before Johann, we can see how Nickell seeks to account for yet another levitation that I didn’t mention:

First, note that these “well-developed muscles” are never substantiated by Nickell in any way, they are simply assumed. Second, the mechanism described is only plausible if Joseph was doing this for a little under a minute. After a minute, he would begin shaking, which would contradict the consistent witness testimony that Joseph was static during these elevations. In the case of the Duke, Joseph was elevated for fifteen minutes, an impossible amount of time to keep a static squat held. Note also the hilarious explanation that the singers never thought to move their hands as far back as Joseph’s feet. This imputes a kind of comical suggestibility on them which makes the skeptical account less plausible.

Joseph’s Greater Flights

When attempting to explain the flight witnessed by the Spanish ambassadors, Nickell points to the particular language employed by Bernini:

This explanation is more of the same obfuscation. It totally ignores the part of the story where Joseph flies over the heads of the ambassadors and then proceeds to fly back over the heads of the ambassadors. Sure, Joseph could have done a human flag for a few seconds. But how did he achieve such flight? Theatre wire had not yet been invented. A jump of such incredible distance into a human flag is only less impossible than proceeding to jump from a human flag back over the ambassadors.

Note also that when Nickell seeks to employ this testimony to refute another levitation I didn’t mention, he must stretch his human flag explanation to impossibility:

Of course, we all know illiteracy causes people to mistake simple jumps for flight halfway to the ceiling. But joking aside, notice what Nickell posits. Joseph held onto the tabernacle (a gold box affixed to the high altar which holds the Eucharist), for fifteen minutes. This means Joseph was holding a human flag (see the photo below) for fifteen times longer than the current world record holder Wang Zhonghua, who set a record of one minute, five seconds.

Notice also that Joseph would have been facing towards the altar with his arms in front of him, a much more challenging task than the standard human flag.

So Nickell’s accounts of these events fail on the grounds of physical impossibility. I will now consider a few more skeptical objections.

Wires?

Was Joseph potentially making use of theater wire? No. Theatre wire was not invented until the 1800s. In order to support himself, Joseph would have had to make use of rope, and anything which possessed the ability to hold him would likely have to be very bulky and obviously visible. It would also require some pulley system or hook to achieve the effect, something which would become obvious if Joseph’s path took a pendulum like arc, something that is clearly contrary to the testimony given by the sources. This also cannot account for miracles like the ones at Osimo which took place outside.

Trampolines?

The first trampolines which could be small enough to be concealed and powerful enough to launch Joseph several feet into the air were not invented until the 1900s at the earliest. Furthermore, this cannot account for outdoor flight, or really even flight in a church, as the trampoline would be obviously visible.

Just a Really Good Tree Climber?

Nickell reflects that some of the levitations involve Joseph landing in a tree. He then argues that Joseph simply climbed the tree so fast that he convinced a fellow priest that he had flown:

But this is ridiculous. No one mistakes tree climbing for flight. An olive tree when fully matured is typically 20 to 30 feet. Scaling a 20 foot tree so fast that the priest watching you do it thinks you flew is a miracle in its own right. If the olive tree was immature, then the miracle becomes the fact that Joseph stayed on the tree branch kneeling for thirty minutes, which would be difficult to handle for a baby olive tree. It also fails to account for all of the non-tree related miracles, as well as the miracle at Osimo where Joseph only climbed the tree after flying 25 yards.

Just Mere Legend?

Of course, a pressing objection given by both Smith and Nickell is the insinuation that this levitation may simply be a local legend. Sure, perhaps Cupertino was not tricking people. But maybe this legend developed apart from his own will. There are hundreds of accounts of saintly miracles which seem grossly implausible that did not emerge with the saint. Why can’t this be one of them? We know that Joseph was prone to fits of ecstasy in which he would look up, mouth agape, at the sky. This is possibly the best attested fact of his life. For the skeptic, this is the pinpoint on which the levitation legend could have emerged. At some point, credulous Italian peasants begin misremembering Joseph as hovering off the ground in his states of ecstasy. Then, over time, the magnitude of the levitations begin increasing, and people became primed to see Joseph’s ordinary ecstasies as levitation.

I believe there are several crucial problems with this argument. The primary issue is how the legend emerged in the first place within Joseph’s own lifetime. Joseph, as I have pointed out, was moved several times throughout his life. We may expect that in Joseph’s childhood town, such legends could emerge after he had left and fester there, only reemerging after his own death. But instead, the legends seem to follow Joseph, bubbling up wherever he goes. Furthermore, the legends don’t simply percolate among the peasant class, but among everyone who is interacting with Joseph, including his own interrogators. If Joseph was simply going into bouts of ecstasy, why did he not make such clarifications to the inquisition? Joseph could have simply made a public statement that he never levitated. And yet, even up until his final weeks of life, we have those who are closest to Joseph, his surgeons and fellow priests, coming to believe he levitated. The other main issue is how close the witnesses are to the reported events. Joseph’s beatification trials began just a year or so after his death. This means that the original, firsthand witnesses to Joseph’s levitations are still alive at the time of his beatification trials. Finally, consider the specific cases. If these stories were simply legends that followed Joseph, why were they converting skeptical Protestants in Catholics? This fact makes legendary development much less likely given the hostility of at least some of the witnesses.

Given the closeness of the accounts to the dates they report and the unity of the eyewitness in affirming that Joseph levitated, there is not reason to believe that these levitation accounts developed as legend.

In Sum

Eire gives four strong reasons to doubt the naturalistic account:

1. The levitations are so extreme as to make the likelihood of trickery seem remote, unlikely, or technologically impossible.

2. The number and status of his witnesses make the accounts seem more credible, even as his levitations become more extreme.

3. Those who witness Joseph’s flights are not just other clergy or religious, but members of the highest echelons of society.

4. The witnesses of the levitations are incredibly varied in quality. These miracles were highly public leading up to Fossombrone.

These reasons, taken in conjunction with the failure of the skeptical explanations provided by Nickell, should lead every rational person to reject the naturalistic account. We simply have too much evidence to the fact that Joseph levitated in the presence of a great number of witnesses, many of whom were reliable intellectuals that would not be easily fooled by whatever trick could be proposed for Joseph’s levitation.

The Demonic Account

Might Joseph have been possessed by some spirit other than a divine one? There are stories, especially in some of the texts I previously mentioned, of levitation occurring outside of a Christian context. Indeed, exorcist records often claim that demons have the ability to move their victims through the air, yank them around, and levitate them. Might Joseph have been subjected to such demonic forces?

I argue this is implausible on account of Joseph’s supernatural virtue. Once we have accepted that divine explanations are possible, we must begin factoring in the fact that Joseph displayed incredible amounts of devotion to God, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Church. This is exactly the opposite kind of practice we would expect from a demon possessed person. We certainly would not expect that person to engage in rigorous fasting, penance, and self-flagellation in the name of Jesus Christ. Joseph’s devotion to Jesus on its own is enough to overturn the demonic account.

The fact that such miracles seem to have been imposed on Joseph, rather than as a result of his own power, can only be evidence towards a divine explanation, not a demonic or miraculous one itself. What the demonic account must show to succeed is why demons would want to levitate Joseph. What vested interest did they have in strengthening the credibility of the Catholic faith?

Furthermore, if the demonic account succeeds, it would seem to undermine credibility of the Christian account of demons. How can a holy man become demon possessed for thirty-five years and continue to practice prayer, fasting, and penance?

The Miraculous Account

Having ruled out the other explanations, I now turn to the miracle account of events. On this account, Joseph was a very holy man from his childhood. He showed immense devotion to God in spite of adversity which kept him from the religious life and priesthood. God has several reasons we can postulate for levitating Joseph:

1. Demonstrating Joseph’s personal holiness.

2. Demonstrating God’s own divine power over nature.

3. Demonstrate that education is not a requirement for holiness.

4. Converting Protestants (as we know happened).

5. Strengthening the faith of Catholic believers at the time of the reformation.

3 and 4 seem especially important. The use of miracles as a motive of credibility is well established by the Old and New Testament. Jesus frequently relies on his miracles to establish the truth of his teaching to the Pharisees. The apostles use miracles to establish their divine authority, and Paul cites his own miracles as evidence for his apostleship. If God wanted to confirm the true faith at the time of competition between two claimants to “the true Church,” it seems obvious that he would want to put the miracles which indicate extreme holiness on the side of the Church he established. To this point, Joseph’s persona seems incredibly emblematic of the Catholic understanding of how we are to understand and establish the true Church. Joseph is obedient to his superiors in spite of persecution. He never once disobeys direct requests, even when they harm him personally. He converts Protestants not with lofty arguments from scriptures, but from signs and wonders which are clearly of a divine origin. His miracles, aside from affirming the value of the Eucharist (as seen in the Johann example), also strengthen the faith of the peasants around him. This is the Catholic paradigm of the motives of credibility, to which Joseph is a strong witness.

The failure of the naturalistic and demonic accounts leaves us with a single miraculous account. Mere legend is improbable given the scope and scale of reports about Joseph’s levitations, especially in light of the fact that the events were reported by firsthand witnesses.

Conclusion

Based on a careful reconstruction of his biography and a thorough examination of competing claims, this article establishes that St. Joseph of Cupertino levitated and flew through the power of God. These miracles are so well attested that they provide powerful testimony to the existence of God and the power of the true Church.

Correction: The original article stated that Prosper Lambertini would have been able to interview the eyewitnesses. This was erroneous and has since been corrected.

Below are a list of topics which we plan to have published in the near-future. If you would like to suggest a topic, comment below!

• Venerable Fulton Sheen

• Blessed Enrique Shaw

• Our Lady of Guadalupe

• Our Lady of Pontmain

• Our Lady of Mount Carmel