(children of eight or nine take part in the Eucharist for the first time). Church interiors present the whole pomp of a kingdom of heaven 'on earth' with images of Christ on the cross artistically carved in wood or sculptured in marble, the stigmata generally dripping with blood in a most realistic way. They display statues and pictures of Mary, with and without the infant Jesus, Mary kneeling at the cross in Gethsemane or sheltering the head of the sufferer in her lap. They offer statues and paintings of the saints. Martyrs and patron saints lie in state under countless glass cases. And everywhere we see the brilliant graphic emblems of the cross. Visual signals of the 'only true faith' follow the faithful everywhere, for it is a pleasure to partake of the holy life.
The vast size of the churches, in which man appears so minute, and the reverent atmosphere in small intimate chapels induce complete repose, relaxation, meditation. Prayers lull those kneeling in the pews. During the mass or high mass fascinating stage management forcibly attracts the attention of the congregation to the mystery of the transubstantiation, the changing of the wine into the blood of our Lord. The liturgy is the form of divine service, the 'religious realization of Christ's work of redemption through the Church'. Acoustic signals, with the antiphonal singing of priests and congregation, magnified and intensified by the peal of the organ (whose almost exclusive adoption is one of the church's cleverest 'effects'), sensitize the congregation, which is already receptive to the great spectacle. The texts of the hymns literally teem with painful suffering: indeed, they immerse the faithful in a feeling of perceiving pain as a pleasure to be sought for, so that thereby they can come closer to the Redeemer. Naturally they end, mostly in a chorus, with a promise of heavenly happiness!
It is a pleasure to suffer and participate in pain.
The visual and acoustic signals, as introduced by modern medicine in Bio Feedback, and the wish to procure pleasure programmed in the human brain demonstrated by Campbell provide illuminating explanations, in my view, of the detailed accounts which visionary children (and the few adult visionaries, too) put on official record. They are 'visions' of pictures and images that have followed them around since they were tiny. Their messages contain texts and vocables which are really childish simplifications of the theological double-dutch pumped into them from pulpit and schoolmaster's desk
... because they have frequently misunderstood what they heard and learnt, they bowdlerize sermons and catechist texts. The result is mysterious incomprehensible communication in which supernatural ideas, soothsayings and prophecies are hopelessly confused.
It is not surprising to anyone familiar with the infantile psyche that it is mostly the youngest of all who are able to enjoy visions. They live in fear of purgatory, 'the place of purification', 'the fire ... for punishing those who have not done penance for their sins' (1 Corinthians 3:15, German version.)
Children fear the threatened punishment, so they do everything in their power to avoid the torments of hell. With naive passion and unbridled childish imagination they become inflated and involved in fantastic ideas and undertakings. There is nothing they long for more than to meet the wondrous figures of the religious world face to face. Every day they learn from beautiful legends about favoured people who have met members of the Holy Family. Parsons and Sunday school teachers have told them these legends, and the Church does not lie. (Stories with ghastly contents, as every psychologist knows, can cause anxiety neuroses in children.) Out of the fantasy grows the enjoyment of forcing miraculous experiences to occur. Then the children 'suddenly' experience, but with full sensory perception, true dreams, which have a surprising content of truth (namely the figures, symbols and words of their religion) 'which appear to lie outside the normal apparition. The objects of the true dreams have long before been recorded by the dreaming psyche. Now, in a flash, they become the
"revelation of the reality of the conscious".' (Herder.) The striving for pleasure, in the case of the children their joy in the vision, is fulfilled.
It is unfair to dispute the subjective 'truth' of their visions. If the Church does not want visions to exist on a large scale, it must change or exclude the training in readiness to receive experiences, the wish to be confronted with the Holy Family. That is something it will certainly not do, as it can make very good use of the so-called 'genuine' visions in its proselytizing work. Walter Nigg, the hagiographer already mentioned, who wanted to see the return of the saints, expresses a pious hope that is equally applicable to the 'necessity' of visions: 'Admittedly they are virtually forgotten nowadays; they are spoken of infrequently or not at all. Yet the silence will not endure, for suddenly they will speak to men again.' The Church, too, has its specific wish for pleasure, for pleasure in miracles.