This is part two of my article series commenting on the claims of Prof. Diana Pasulka. You can find part one here.
Saint Francis of Assisi
Just like Saint Teresa of Ávila, Saint Francis of Assisi is also portrayed as someone who had a UFO experience.
Pasulka said in one of her interviews: “And when you look at these events back in that time period, you also see a common pattern that happens today. And what is that pattern? That pattern is, is that, you know, let’s take Saint Francis of Assisi’s stigmata. If you look at his stigmata where it looks like he’s been, you know, basically radiated by UFO. That’s what my students say when they go and they see this in the Louvre and such.”
She then claims that the artistic representations don’t look like the primary source material, but doesn’t elaborate on what that means.
The primary source for the history of the stigmata is the “First life of St. Francis of Assisi” written by Thomas of Celano (Tomasso da Celano), who was a contemporary of Saint Francis.
“Two years before he gave his soul back to heaven, while he was staying in the hermitage called Alverna (so called from the mountain on which it stands), Francis had a vision in which he saw a man like a seraph: he had six wings and was standing above him with his hands outstretched and his feet joined together, and was fixed to a cross. Two wings were lifted above his head, and two were spread ready for flight, and two covered his whole body. When Francis saw this he was utterly amazed: he could not fathom what this vision might mean. He was overcome with happiness and filled with intense joy at the kindly and gracious way the seraph was looking at him, and the seraph s beauty was indescribable, but the fact that he was nailed to a cross, and the sight of his cruel suffering terrified Francis. Consequently he was both sad and happy, if I can so describe him; joy and grief alternated in him. He wondered anxiously what the vision could possibly represent, and racked his brains trying to make sense of it. But still he could grasp no clear idea of its meaning, and as the strangeness of the vision continued to haunt him, the marks of nails began to appear on his hands and feet just like those he had seen on the crucified figure above him.” (no. 94)
“His hands and feet seemed to be pierced by nails, the heads of the nails appearing on the inside of his hands and the upper side of his feet, and their points protruding on the other side. On the palms of his hands these marks were round, but on the outer side they were longer, and there were little pieces of flesh projecting from the surface which looked like the ends of nails, bent and hammered back. So too there were the marks of nails imprinted on his feet, and the flesh was swollen where the nails appeared. His right side was scarred as if it had been pierced by a spear, and it often seeped blood, so that his tunic and undergarment were frequently drenched in it.” (no 95.)
Thomas then describes how Francis showed his wounds to only a few people due to his humility. He writes: “fearing that if he did reveal it to people, they would tell it to others as proof of the special affection he had for them, and in consequence he might suffer some loss in the grace that had been bestowed on him.” (no. 96)
It is true that Saint Francis at first didn’t understand the vision, but it is a completely unjustified leap to argue that this was a UFO.
The convent case
Often during her interviews, Pasulka uses a case she found from the 19th century, to illustrate how, in her view, Catholic mystical tradition about souls in Purgatory are linked with UFO phenomena.
“In the late 1800s, while sleeping in her small cell in a Catholic convent where she lived, a young nun was awakened by a shining object, “like a flame,” that appeared to emerge from her room’s wall and hover above her. Terrified, she told the other nuns and the priest of the community about her experience. They did not believe her report. The events continued. Undaunted and frightened, the young nun persisted and convinced the Mother Superior to stay up with her one night. The Mother Superior, tired but curious, sat by the nun and waited for the flame to appear. Like the previous nights, it emerged from the wall and hovered over the two women. The Mother Superior was at first surprised but soon determined that the flame must be a soul from purgatory in need of prayers, so the next day she instructed the members of the convent to pray for the “soul” (Walsh Pasulka 2014, 131).
This report from a nineteenth-century Catholic periodical seems strangely similar to the following report of a floating “ball of light” that confronted two young women from the United States in the early twenty-first century. When Melissa was in her early twenties she saw a ball of light come through the sliding doors of her apartment, “bounce around the room,” go down the hall and into another room and “through a wall.” She was with a friend, and they both ignored the phenomenon until Melissa said, “Wait a minute, the curtains are closed. It’s not a light from a car going down the street.” As Sheila related, “They followed the light around the room before it went back outside through the same sliding doors.” (Mack 2007, 1326–1329)” (PDF link)
She uses this example in many of her interviews. However, in the Catholic mystical tradition, there is no tradition of seeing flying balls of light.
People have seen Jesus or Mary or angels in visions, received stigmata, received the miracle of tongues or of bilocation etc. etc. And when souls appear, they usually appear in human shape. Seeing “orbs of light” is not in this tradition.
Whether “ball lightning” or other natural phenomena exist or not, is a question of science, but I fail to see what it has to do with UFOs.
Satan
Unsurprisingly, Pasulka downplays Satan and claims that “if you’re looking at a cohesive person, you know, or a cohesive entity called Satan: it’s not cohesive within the Bible.” She uses the example of the Book of Job, where Satan is portrayed as visiting God and talking to God to ask for permission to tempt Job.
She claims that if there is a smell of sulfur at UFO sightings, than that is due to cultural factors, for example, because the UFO appeared in a Catholic country and they associate the UFOs with demons.
Purgatory
Although this is not related to the main topic of the article, Pasulka is a religious studies professor, and I would like to critique some of her statements concerning purgatory.
She wrote a book on purgatory in 2014 with the title “Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture”.
The blurb, as visible on Amazon, starts with the following: “After purgatory was officially defined by the Catholic Church in the thirteenth century, its location became a topic of heated debate and philosophical speculation …”
The basic idea of purgatory goes back to the earliest Church, not the thirteenth century. This is a topic way too complex for this article, but I would like to bring just two quotes from the Church Fathers about purgatory.
“If a man … after his departure out of the body, gains knowledge of the difference between virtue and vice, and finds that he is not able to partake of divinity until he has been purged of the filthy contagion in his soul by the purifying fire.” (St. Gregory of Nyssa, Sermon on the Dead, AD 383)
“Let us help and commemorate them. If Job’s sons were purified by their father’s sacrifice [Job l:5), why would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them.” (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians 41:5, AD 392)
Other quotes can be found here.