Archbishop George Pell and the Golden Calf of Medjugorje



FROM the VAULT

A reader has produced a printed copy of an old AMAIC article, saying: “Remember this?” Un-dated, the article would have been written around 1999, when Archbishop George Pell allowed the Medjugorje seer, Ivan Dragicevic, to speak at the Cathedral in Melbourne {On this same visit, see also the AMAIC’S “Medjugorje and the Flow of Grace”: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=7627&CFID=55814746&CFTOKEN=95525630}. Whether or not this article (here somewhat modified) is a ‘Golden Oldie’, it does at least have the word ‘Golden’ in its title:

Archbishop George Pell and

the Golden Calf of Medjugorje

Heavenly Silence Versus the Din of Hell

A special trick of the devil is to fabricate ‘spiritualities’ that don’t foster peace and quiet but instead are noisy and disorientating. Joe McGrath (d. 1995), a founding father of the AMAIC, who was rather loquacious, used often quote that well-known saying, “silence is golden”. Whilst Saint John the Evangelist tells us that there is “silence in Heaven” (Revelation 8:1). The habit of maintaining a prayerful ‘silence’ amidst the loud din of this world is truly a ‘golden’one; and it is absolutely necessary for one’s peace and sanity. The habit is best acquired through frequent reception of the Sacraments, saying the Rosary, and making as lengthy-as-possible quality stays in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, there to ‘sunbake’ under what Archbishop Fulton Sheen liked to call “the cobalt gaze of Christ”.

Satan’s‘spiritualities’ do not allow for the cultivation of this necessary quiet and peace of soul. They much closer resemble the scene at Babel rather than Saint John’s Heaven. Classical examples of this are Medjugorje, and, in its extreme form, the Charismatic (noisy praying in tongues) movement: two ‘spiritualities’that, as we well know, are integrally connected. About 15 years ago [prior to the writing of this article] a contemplatively-inclined MSC priest shrewdly remarked: “The Charismatics supposedly have all these gifts; the gift of miracles, the gift of tongues, the gift of prophecy. But the one gift they don’t have is the gift of silence!”And, interestingly, the Church’s new Rite of Exorcism identifies as a possible indication of demonic possession a person’s “speaking in unknown languages”.

Whilst, regarding Medjugorje, Bishop Pavao Žanić hit the nail right on the head when he classified it as ‘lies, fraud, deception and big money’. These cannot, of course, originate from God, but instead find their explanation in the recent statement on the Rite of Exorcism by Cardinal Jorge Estevez, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments (emphasis added):

The sinister influence of the devil and his followers usually is exercised through deception, falsehood, lies and confusion ….

Despite the overwhelming evidence now that Medjugorje is not of a supernatural origin – and despite the fact that in this very month of February 1999 Rome will be removing the Franciscans from Medjugorje under the threat of excommunication, to be replaced by hand-picked diocesan priests from Rome – Cardinal Clancy and [now Cardinal] Pell have given permission for the Medjugorje seer, Ivan ‘the Unbearable’ Dragićević, to speak in the Cathedrals of Sydney and Melbourne this same month. Indeed the Sydney talks have already taken place. How can the hierarchy possibly justify this action of theirs that is perplexing so many faithful Marian Catholics? These Catholics are wont to liken Medjugorje (by stark contrast to the approved Lourdes and Fatima) to a veritable flood of verbal vomit from Satan.

So the serpent vomited water from his mouth like a river, after the Woman, to sweep her away in the current…. (Revelation 13:15).

Now, dragons are supposed to belch fire, so isn’t “water” in this case a perfect description of the insipid Medjugorje messages, and of Modernist psycho-babble in general! Might not the Holy Spirit want us to contrast it here with the opposite element of “fire”that issues from the mouths of the Lamb’s servants, to consume his enemies (e.g. Revelation 11:5).

The ‘Aaron Syndrome’

Most perplexing of all for Marian-sensitive Catholics in this whole controversy is the fact that the highly-reputed Archbishop George Pell of Melbourne is allowing Ivan to speak in St. Patrick’s cathedral. Perplexing? Yes – but it seems to have a biblical precedent in the case of Aaron and the Golden Calf. Aaron the high-priest was ostensibly a ‘good man’. Had not God personally chosen him, eloquent brother of Moses, to be the spokesman, “the mouth” before Pharaoh, to cover the verbal inadequacies of the taciturn Moses? ‘But, my Lord, never in my life have I been a man of eloquence …’, had Moses protested (Exodus 4:10, 13-16).

No Modernist psycho-babbler was he, anyway!

But eloquent Aaron was apparently too flawed to be a first-rate leader, suffering from human respect. Aaron, it seems, wanted to be popular, to impress the influential!

When the people saw that Moses was a long time before coming down the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make us a god to go at the head of us; this Moses, the man who brought us up from Egypt, we do not know what has become of him’ (Exodus 32:1).

To be popular, to be known, to be someone; these are the very things that the saints tell us the Blessed Virgin Mary most shunned during her earthly life, having no greater desire, apparently, than ‘to remain hidden, unknown, known only to God’ (e.g. St. Louis de Montfort).

So apparently a desire for popularity is not a Marian trait.

To recall some years ago, when then Bishop Pell was becoming the ‘talk of the town’ amongst traditional Catholics, some friends in Melbourne (Victoria) went along to hear him talk. It needs to be recalled how the long-suffering Melbournian Catholics had by then had to endure a very long spiritual drought under decades of neglectful leadership, prompting the AMAIC’S Frits Albers to write the book, How an ‘Alien Tradition’ Became Established in Catholic Melbourne (1991) (http://users.pipeline.com.au/~rossj/booklist.html). Catholics there were desperate for some good leadership and it was rumoured that Bishop Pell might fit the bill. On the strength of this, the ‘insiders’attended the talk. But, as they later reported, they left the auditorium feeling quite unimpressed. Bishop Pell, they said, had “played to the gallery”all night. They especially noted that he was extremely weak on the subject of Teilhard de Chardin, not wanting to offend the theologians there.

Has anything changed?

The word going round today is that Archbishop Pell is not personally in favour of Medjugorje. Nor apparently is his close associate, Monsignor Peter Elliott, who lives in the same residence. This makes all the more incredible their allowing Ivan Dragićević to talk in St. Patrick’s Cathedral! As with Aaron of old, the dissatisfied unruly “people”, the Medjugorjists, have “gathered round”him, and he, like Aaron (who may also have personally been uncomfortable with idolisng a Golden Calf), is weakly succumbing to the high-powered pressure. Medjugorje, it should be kept in mind, is being promoted throughout Oceania by millionaire Victorians, Leon le Grand and Kevin Morley. Money talks! The‘Madonna’ of Medjugorje, the ‘Woman’ of the Antichurch, is, according to a recent description, “the hard currency Madonna”.

Things Allowed to Get “Out of Hand”

Bishops are a highly privileged class. Aaron the high-priest had been an eyewitness to God’s majesty, in Egypt, at the Crossing of Yam Suf (the ‘Sea of Reeds”), and now at the holy mountain, Horeb, where God had manifested himself in terrifying aspect: “The whole scene was so terrible”, recalled Saint Paul, “that Moses said: I am afraid, and was trembling with fright” (Hebrews 12:21). But Aaron now, without even a whimper of protest as it seems, succumbed to the wishes of a sinful people (Exodus 32:2-5):

So Aaron said, “Take the gold rings from the ears of your wives and sons and daughters, and bring them to me.” All the people took the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and moulded it into the shape of a calf. When the people saw it, they exclaimed, “O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” Aaron saw how excited the people were, sohe built an altar in front of the calf. Then he announced, “Tomorrow will be a festival to the Lord!”

Thus, thanks to‘Archbishop’ Aaron’s compromise, Yahweh was ‘yoked’ to Baal in the minds of his flock: a syncretism that Freemasonry would later take on board and designate with the code-word Jabulon (Ja, standing for Yahweh, and bul, for Baal).

Saint Paul fiercely denounced this sort of religious syncretism (2 Corinthians 6:14-16). And Bishop Žanić, in the mid-1980’s, reiterated in the strongest possible terms Saint Paul’s sentiments: “Here [at Medjugorje] people are praying and fasting a lot, inspired as they are, of course, by the belief that these events are indeed supernatural; and to preach untruth to the faithful about God, Jesus and the Madonna is worthy of the depths of Hell”.

Mary, ‘Ark of the Covenant’

Aaron, whilst pandering to the whims of a sinful people, instead of leading them in the paths of righteousness, was missing out on something of vital spiritual significance. Here he was standing amidst noise and confusion, at the foot of the holy mountain, whilst his brother Moses, atop the mountain, was receiving God’s Law and a blueprint (vision) of the Ark of the Covenant. Translated into modern terms, Archbishop Pell is awkwardly located in the camp of “the hard currency Madonna” of Medjugorje; whilst his brother bishops of Mostar, the Most Revs. Žanićand (his successor Ratko) Perić, have been faithfully serving the true Mary, one of whose titles is “Ark of the Covenant”. For the Ark made by human hands, according to God’s specifications, is a symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and even of her miraculous image of Guadalupé which no human hands could possibly make. To be noted in this context is that Ivan’s talk in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, occurred on the very day after the feast-day of Our Lady of Lourdes (11^thFebruary) - a devotion that Bishop Žanić loves deeply – and Lourdes is absolutely replete with Sinaïtic symbolism, e.g.:

Mary’s ‘I am the Immaculate Conception’recalls God’s ‘I am who Am’;

The famous grotto at Lourdes and the cave atop Mount Sinai;

The miraculous flow of healing water that Saint Bernadette dug out recalls the life-giving water that Moses caused to issue from the rock.

Sister Lucia’s Wisdom

The Blessed Virgin Mary, the very embodiment of Wisdom, has never been one to waste her words or make a fuss. Because of this it has been traditional to depict her with a small mouth. Very few of Mary’s actual words are recorded in the Bible. And Sister Lucia, Mary’s genuine seer, is, as we should expect, a fitting mirror image of her Mistress. One has heard hardly a word from Lucia over the many years since 1917. She, like Mary when on earth, is a powerful but hidden instrument of God. When Sister Lucia is inspired to speak out publicly, her words are full of wisdom, based on deep prayer and obedience. In recent statements Sister Lucia has emphasised the fact that the devil is causing“disorientation” throughout the world. The following comments attributed to her have been taken from the Internet. Sword of Truth recently spoke with Sister Lucia’s spiritual director, Father Messias Coelho (publisher of the official “Fatima Magazine” in the Cova da Iria) re Lucia’s reputed statement that the Virgin Mary is not appearing at Medjugorje (bold only added):

Fr. Coelho not only definitively enlightened us, but also dozens of [Catholic United for the Faith] members during a four-hour session talk he delivered in Detroit, that Sr. Lucia had stated over and over again that it was not the Virgin Mary appearing at Medjugorje. …. Sr. Lucia … is in good company, for Bishop Zanic of Mostar … Cardinal Kuharic … Cardinal Vink Puljik, [Ratko Perić,] the new Bishop of Medjugorje … and numerous other pious and truly illumined souls have clearly stated,

“It is not the Virgin Mary appearing in Medjugorje”.

…Additional words of Sr. Lucia regarding the devil’s attempt to imitate Mary, and seduce the pious devoted to her:

From a letter to priests ca 1969-70:

“I see by your letter that you are preoccupied by the disorientation of our time. It is sad, in fact, that so many persons let themselves be dominated by the diabolical wave that is sweeping the world and that they have in this way become estranged from God, and without God, everything is lacking”.

“The devil is very cunning and looks for our weak points in order to attack us”.

“If we are not diligent and careful to obtain from God strength, we shall fall, for our age is very wicked and we are weak. Only the strength of God can keep us on our feet”.

From a letter to a staunch Marian friend, Sister Lucia wrote:

“Let people say the Rosary every day, Our Lady has repeated that in all Her apparitions, as if to fortify us in these times of diabolical disorientation,in order that we not let ourselves be deceived by false doctrines …Unfortunately, in religious matters the people for the most part are ignorant and allow themselves to be led wherever they are taken. Hence, the great responsibility of the one who has the duty of leading them”.

“It is a diabolical disorientation that is invading the world, deceiving souls! It is necessary to stand up to the devil”.

On September 16, 1970, Sr. Lucia wrote to a religious friend:

“Our poor Lord, He has saved us with so much love, and He is so little understood! So little loved! So badly served! It is painful to see such a great confusion, and in so many persons who occupy places of responsibility! …”.

“For us, we must try, as much as it is possible for us, to make reparation through a still more intimate union with the Lord …”.

“The fact is that the devil has succeeded in bringing in evil under the appearance of good, and the blind are beginning to lead others …”.

“This is like the Lord told us in His Gospel, and souls allow themselves to be taken in. Gladly I sacrifice myself and offer God my life for peace in His Church, for priests and for all consecrated souls, especially for those who are deceived and misguided!”

Spoken like a true, sacrificial seer of Fatima.

But self-seeking Ivan Dragićević does not speak in such sacrificial terms. He, a liar according to Bishop Žanić,is typical of the noisy, popularity seeking pseudo-apparitionist.

And what was it that first drew the attention of Moses and Joshua to the revelry going on around the Golden Calf at the foot of the holy mountain? It was the incredibly loud noise!

Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting.‘There is the sound of battle in the camp’, he told Moses. Moses answered him:

‘No song of victory is this sound,

No wailing for defeat this sound;

It is the sound of chanting that I hear’.

(Exodus 32:17-18)

Now Aaron was to find himself caught squarely between a rock and a hard place, between the angry Moses and the orgiastic Israelites:

As he approached the camp and saw the calf and the groups dancing, Moses’ anger blazed. He threw down the tablets he was holding and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He seized the calf they had made and burned it, grinding it into powder which he scattered on the water; and he made the sons of Israel drink it. (vv. 19-20)

Then he rounded on Aaron whom he accused of having the responsibility for this people: “To Aaron Moses said, ‘What has this people done to you, for you to bring such a great sin on them?’” (v. 21). {Moses, the mildest man upon the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3), was never more eloquent than when infuriated.} And it was now that the normally eloquent Aaron had to struggle to find the right words. In fact he came out with history’s weakest-ever excuse (Exodus 32:22, 24):

‘Let not my lord’s anger blaze like this’ Aaron answered. ‘You know yourself how prone this people is to evil. … So I said to them, ‘who has gold?’, and they took it off and brought it to me. I threw it into the fire and out came this calf’.

Is that what our bishops are asking: “Who has gold? Who has prestige? Who has influence?

One hopes not.

Do they, like Aaron, not want to admit to helping mould the Golden Calf?

The sacred writer, however, does not allow Aaron to escape the blame, but names him: “…Moses saw the people so out of hand – for Aaronhad allowed them to lapse into idolatry with enemies all round them …” (v. 25).

And note also that Sister Lucia, as quoted above, is not afraid to point an accusing finger at Church leaders.

Who will be Moses for the Australian hierarchy?

….

Mary shines like a true "Morning Star"

Never has Mary, “the Morning Star”, been more necessary to humankind than in our modern world that has so badly lost its bearings and become disorientated, largely because Church leaders have – like Aaron the high priest – allowed their flocks to get completely “out of hand”, a prey to Satan.

Satan disorientates. Mary orientates. John Paul II’s lovely encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, is full of allusions to the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘our fixed point’, or star ‘of reference’. To quote just this one example (# 3):

The fact that she “preceded” the coming of Christ is reflected every year in the liturgy of Advent. Therefore, if to that ancient historical expectation of the Saviour we compare these years which are bringing us closer to the end of the second Millennium after Christ and to the beginning of the third, it becomes fully comprehensible that in this present period we wish to turn in a special way to her, the one who in the “night” of the Advent expectation began to shine like a true “Morning Star” (Stella Matutina). For just as this star, together with the “dawn,” precedes the rising of the sun, so Mary from the time of her Immaculate Conception preceded the coming of the Saviour, the rising of the “Sun of Justice” in the history of the human race.

The last word in all of this should be given to the loyal and courageous Bishop Žanić, who wrote the following inspiring pæan of praise to the Immaculate Virgin Mary:

I turn to you, Immaculate Virgin and Mother, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, Mother of this congregation which is looking for you, prays to you and loves you. I am turning to you, as your servant and Bishop of Mostar, and before the entire world I proclaim my deep and unshakable faith in all the privileges that God has endowed you with, by which you are the first and the most distinguished creature. I also affirm my deep and unshakable faith in your intercession with almighty God for all the needs of your children in this valley of tears. I assert my deep and unshakable faith in your love toward us sinners, and that love you confirmed with your apparitions and assistance. I myself have led pilgrimages to Lourdes. Exactly through the virtue of that faith, I your servant, Bishop of Mostar, before the great multitudes which called on you, find and accept your great sign which became sure and clear after these six years. I am not in need of a special sign, but it is necessary to those who believed in the untruth. That sign to me is that for six years you steadfastly remained silent to all rumours about the sign: it will be, they said, on the hillside of apparitions, visible and permanent; it is going to be realized soon; it will be before long, in a while; be patient for a while, so they were saying in 1981... Then again: it will be realized on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, for Christmas, for the New Year. etc.

Thank you, Madonna, because with your long silence of six years you have demonstrated that you have not spoken here, nor appeared, nor given any message or secret nor promised a special sign. Blessed Virgin, Mother of Christ and of us, intercede for peace in this restless region of the Church, in the diocese of Mostar, intercede especially for this place, for this parish, where innumerable times your blessed name was mentioned in words which were not yours. Make them stop fabricating messages in your name. Accept, Blessed Virgin, satisfaction through the sincere prayers of the devout souls who have no part in fanaticism and disobedience to the Church. Let us all reach the real truth. Dear Madonna, humble and obedient servant of God let the faithful of Medjugorje follow with their firm steps the shepherd of the local Church so that all of us might together glorify and praise you in truth and love. Amen!

+ Pavao Zanic, Bishop
Mostar, July 24, 1987