Catholic theologians, although commonly denying that the soul can be separated from the body in natural or diabolical ecstasy, admit generally that, in the case of the divine _raptus_, this separation, or rather projection--for death is supposed not to ensue--may take place; although many of them--amongst others Benedict XIV. (_De Beatif._, lib. iii. cap. 49)--deny that, in fact, such separation ever does occur. On this question, Cardinal Bona (_De Discret. Spir._, cap. 14) says: "Whether the soul, in the higher or more vehement rapt, sometimes leaves the body, or can leave it, is a doubtful and difficult question; for the apostle, caught up into the third heaven, professed that he knew not whether this was in the body or out of the body; and what so great a man did not know it is not for us to define. 'For who,' saith Augustine, most learnedly disputing of the rapt of Paul, 'would dare to say he knew what the apostle said he did not know?' The same ignorance possessed S. Teresa's mind; for, describing the effects of rapture in _The Castle of the Soul_, mans. 6 c. 5, she says: 'Whether in the body or out of the body these things take place, I cannot tell: I certainly dare not affirm on my oath either that the soul is then in the body, or that the body can, in the meanwhile, live without the soul.' Then, making use of some similitude to explain the matter, she ends by saying she knows not what to say. But S. Catherine of Sienna, herself a divine patient (_Epist. xii. ad P. Raym._), does not hesitate to affirm for certain that her soul sometimes left her body and tasted the sweets of immortality; which occasional separation of the soul and body it is manifest could take place, not by the powers of nature, but by the omnipotence of God." I would suggest that separation or projection would seem to admit of degrees, some of which may be possible to other powers short of omnipotence.
To this phenomenon of projection I should be inclined to reduce the majority, if not all, the cases of replication or bilocation recorded in the lives of the saints. Benedict XIV. (_De Beatif._, lib. iv. pars. i. cap. 32), when discussing the apparitions of living saints, is careful to explain that he is not pretending to entertain the question of the possibility of "one and the same body of a living man being at the same time in two places, which philosophers call replication." Both S. Thomas and S. Bonaventure insist upon the intrinsic impossibility of the presence of a body "extensive"--_i.e._ clothed in its dimensions--at the same time in more than one place. That this is so, De Lugo, whilst advocating against Vasquez the contrary opinion, intrepidly admits. We may add that the fact of trilocation being unheard of is, so far, an argument against the possibility of replication; for once admit that replication is possible, and there is no reason for limiting to duality of presence.