Question:
Answer:
Poem of the Man-God, a multi-volume work of prose written by Maria Valtorta, purports to be a factual account of the life of Christ as revealed by Jesus himself. Interest in the work grew after one of the alleged seers from Medjugorje claimed that the Virgin Mary okayed the reading of the book. The history of the book leads one to question the credibility of this claim. In 1960 The Poem of the Man-God, then a four-volume set, was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, summarized the findings of the Holy Office in an article titled “A Life of Jesus Badly Fictionalized.” When the publishers tried to get around this condemnation the next year by publishing a new ten-volume set, the work again was condemned in the Vatican paper which called it “a mountain of childishness, of fantasies, and of historical and exegetical falsehoods, diluted in a subtly sensual atmosphere.”
The “visions” and “dictations” referred to in the work, The Poem of the Man-God, are simply the literary forms used by the author to narrate in her own way the life of Jesus. They cannot be considered supernatural in origin.
In addition, in correspondence with Catholic Answers, Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, pointed out that, although the Index was abolished in 1965, it still retains its moral force, and faithful Catholics should heed the reservations and cautions expressed in it.
It should be reiterated that alleged “visions,” “revelations,” and “messages” contained in the writings of Maria Valtorta—or, in any case, attributed to them—cannot be regarded as having a supernatural origin. Rather, they should be considered simply as literary forms that the author used to narrate the life of Jesus Christ in her own way.
In its long tradition, the Church does not accept as normative the apocryphal gospels and other similar texts since it does not recognize them as divinely inspired. Instead, the Church refers back to the sure reading of the inspired Gospels.