CathInfo.com

Nor do we even know

1) how much of the writing attributed to them was actually their work or words  (for all we know, 95% of Emmerich's work was concocted by Brentano)

2) how much if it was actual "revelation" vs. their own editorializing.  They describe things that they see/hear or think they see/hear, and their descriptions necessarily entail a certain amount of interpretation

It's chiefly why the Church did not canonize them ... because it might have meant a tacit endorsement of everything in those works.  It's well known that on a fair number of details the various recipients of the revelations have contradicted one another.

Exactly!

You guys have missed the point... you're referring to the Western position as if it's the Church's only position. The East considers the women found in Luke 7, John 8, and Mary Magdalene to be three different people. That has always been the Tradition of the Eastern Fathers. It's a perfectly Catholic position, unless you believe the Eastern Catholic Tradition to be subordinate to the Western Tradition... in fact, I'd say the Eastern Fathers (as a whole) far exceed the Western Fathers; save for the brilliance of a handful of Saints like Ambrose/Augustine. [emphasis added]

This sort of misguided enthusiasm—misguided in that it warps a legitimate interest in the differing positions of the eight Fathers of the Church on nondogmatic matters into a sectional contest where one side must be declared the victor—is injurious to the study of the Faith and indeed to a proper understanding of orthodoxy.

Two elements of Catholic orthodoxy that the quoted commenter seems unaware of are that it has been well established in authoritative papal teaching for at least 1,000 years (1) that the Latin Rite holds primacy as the normative rite in Christianity and (2) that even in matters legitimately disputed by Eastern and Western sources, Western Catholics are bound to give at least religious deference to Western authorities. The Latin primacy is underscored by the fact that before the Council, an Eastern Catholic could formally become a Western Catholic simply by declaring his wish to do so, whereas a move in the opposite direction required formal permission from either a Roman dicastery or one's local bishop—the alternative depending upon when the requester was alive.

So in a certain sense, like it or not, the Eastern Tradition is subordinate to the Western in that it is fundamentally exceptional rather than normative.