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The Vatican supports EVP
Unknown to many Christians, the Catholic Church
has been actively positive and encouraging towards investigation
of the Electronic Voice Phenomena.
• Two of the earliest investigators were Italian Catholic
priests, Father Ernetti and Father Gemelli, who came upon
the phenomena by chance while they were recording Gregorian
chants in 1952.
• Father Gemelli heard his own father's voice on the
tape calling him by a childhood nick-name saying 'Zucchini,
it is clear, don't you know it is I '.
• Deeply troubled by Catholic teaching in regard to
contact with the dead the two priests visited Pope Pius XII
in Rome.
• The Pope reassured them:Dear Father Gemelli, you really
need not worry about this. The existence of this voice is
strictly a scientific fact and has nothing to do with spiritism.
The recorder is totally objective. It receives and records
only sound waves from wherever they come. This experiment
may perhaps become the cornerstone for a building for scientific
studies which will strengthen people's faith in a hereafter
.
(Italian Journal Astra, June 1990 quoted Kubis and
Macy, 1995: 102).
• Pope Pius' cousin, the Rev. Professor Dr Gebhard Frei,
co-founder of the Jung Institute, was an internationally known
parapsychologist who worked closely with Raudive, a pioneer
in the research. He was also the President of the International
Society for Catholic Parapsychologists. He himself is on record
as stating: All that I have read and heard forces me to believe
that the voices come from transcendental, individual entities.
Whether it suits me or not, I have no right to doubt the reality
of the voices (Kubris and Macy, 1995:104).
• Dr Frie died on October 27, 1967. In November 1967
at numerous taping sessions a voice giving its name as Gebhard
Frei came through. The voice was identified by Professor Peter
Hohenwarter of the University of Vienna as positively belonging
to Dr Frei (Ostrander and Schroeder, 1977: 271).
• Pope Paul VI was well aware of the work being done
from 1959 onwards on the Elecronic Voices by his good friend,
Swedish film producer Friedrich Jurgenson, who had made a
documentary film about him. The Pope made Jurgenson a Knight
Commander of the Order of St Gregory in 1969 for his work
(see picture left). Jurgenson wrote to Bander, a British voice
researcher:I have found a sympathetic ear for the Voice Phenomenon
in the Vatican. I have won many wonderful friends among the
leading figures in the Holy City. Today 'the bridge' stands
firmly on its foundations (Ostrander and Schroeder, 1977:
264).
• The Vatican also gave permission for its own priests
to conduct research into the voices—Father Leo Schmid,
a Swiss theologist, collected more than ten thousand of them
in his book When the Dead Speak which was published in 1976,
shortly after his death.• Another Vatican-approved researcher
was Father Andreas Resch who as well as conducting his own
experiments began courses in Parapsychology at the Vatican's
school for priests in Rome (Kubris and Macy, 1995:104).
• In 1970 the International Society for Catholic Parapsychologists
held a conference in Austria and a major part of that conference
was concerned with papers on the Electronic Voice Phenomena.
• In England in 1972 four senior members of the Catholic
hierarchy were involved in the famous Pye recording studio
tests conducted by Peter Bander.• Father Pistone, Superior
of the Society of St Paul in England, said in an interview
after the tests:
I do not see anything against the teaching of
the Catholic Church in the Voices, they are something extra-ordinary
but there is no reason to fear them, nor can I see any danger
(Bander 1973: 132).
The Church realizes that she cannot control the
evolution of science. Here we are dealing with a scientific
phenomenon; this is progress and the Church is progressive.
I am happy to see that representatives of most Churches
have adopted the same attitude as we have: we recognize
that the subject of the Voice Phenomena stirs the imagination
even of those who have always maintained that there could
never be any proof or basis for discussion on the question
of life after death.
This book and the subsequent experiments raise serious doubts,
even in the minds of atheists. This alone is a good reason
for the Church supporting the experiments. A second reason
may be found in the greater flexibility of the Church since
Vatican II, we are willing to keep an open mind on all matters
which do not contradict Christ's teaching (Bander 1973:103).
• His excellence, Archbishop H.E. Cardinale, Apostolic
Nuncio to Belgium, commented:Naturally it is all very mysterious,
but we know the voices are there for all to hear them (Bander
1973: 132).
• The Right Reverend Monsignor Professor C. Pfleger
commented:Facts have made us realize that between death and
resurrection there is another realm of post-mortal existence.
Christian theology has little to say about this realm (Bander
1973 : 133).
• Bander's book (1973: 133) contains a photograph of
the Right Reverend Mgr. Stephen O'Connor, Vicar General and
Principal Roman Catholic Chaplain to the Royal Navy, listening
to the playback of a recording on which a voice had manifested
claiming to be that of a young Russian naval officer known
to himself who had committed suicide two years earlier. Dr
Raudive had recorded the message independently at an earlier
session.
• Since the 1970s the Vatican has continued to sponsor
extensive research into all areas of parapsychology including
Electronic Voice Phenomena.
• Recently Father Gino Concetti, one of the most competent
theologians in the Vatican, said in an interview:
"According to the modern catechism, God allows our dear
departed persons who live in an ultra-terrestrial dimension,
to send messages to guide us in certain difficult moments
of our lives. The Church has decided not to forbid any more
the dialogue with the deceased with the condition that these
contacts are carried out with a serious religious and scientific
purpose" (printed in the Vatican newspaper Osservatore
Romano—cited in Sarah Estep's American Association Electronic
VoicePhenomena, Inc Newsletter, vol 16 No, 2 1997 )
Clearly, the Catholic Church realizes that science is making
enormous, inevitable, irreversible and cumulative progress
which nobody is in a position to stop.
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