by
Damien F. Mackey
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Although Medjugorje claims to be a continuation
of Fatima and the “last appearance of Jesus or Mary on earth,” there is
strangely no exhortation to the devotion of the Five First Saturdays, which Our
Lady of Fatima asked for in reparation for the five kinds of offenses and
blasphemies against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
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According to:
Millions of pilgrims flock to Medjugorje every
year, but the popular shrine has seen a decline in visitors after Pope Francis
said a decision on the apparitions is imminent, the New York Times has
reported.
The Pope told reporters on the papal plane returning
from Sarajevo that the Vatican was “close to coming to a decision” on the
investigation into the claims at Medjugorje.
“For the moment all that is being done is to give
guidelines to the bishops,” he said, “but along the lines that will be taken [by
the Church].”
The number of Italians – the bulk of pilgrims that
visit the Bosnian town – has halved since his announcement, according to the
American newspaper. ….
If this be
the case, then perhaps some erstwhile aficionados
of the messages have got wind of Pope Francis’s own apparent sentiments, that the Virgin Mary “is not a postmistress, who sends messages every day”. For
surely this statement of the pope’s does not appear to hold out much hope at all for Medjugorje to be approved by the Church as
an authentic apparition.
Continuing
his homily, at St. Martha’s House (November 2013) Pope Francis explained (http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/santa-marta-29726/):
…. In the Gospel, the Pope underlined, “we find ourselves before another
spirit, contrary to the wisdom of God: the spirit of curiosity. And when we
want to be the masters of the projects of God, of the future, of things, to
know everything, to have everything in hand... the Pharisees asked Jesus, 'When
will the Kingdom of God come?'”
“Curious! They wanted to know the date, the day... The spirit of
curiosity distances us from the Spirit of wisdom because all that interests us
is the details, the news, the little stories of the day. Oh, how will this come
about? It is the how: it is the spirit of the how! And the spirit of curiosity
is not a good spirit. It is the spirit of dispersion, of distancing oneself from
God, the spirit of talking too much. And Jesus also tells us something
interesting: this spirit of curiosity, which is worldly, leads us to
confusion.”
“Curiosity, the Pope continued, impels us to want to feel that the Lord
is here or rather there, or leads us to say: "But I know a visionary, who
receives letters from Our Lady, messages from Our Lady.” And the Pope
commented: "But, look, Our Lady is the Mother of everyone! And she loves
all of us. She is not a postmistress, who sends messages every day. Such
responses to these situations, he affirmed, "distance us from the Gospel,
from the Holy Spirit, from peace and wisdom, from the glory of God, from the
beauty of God." "Jesus says that the Kingdom of God does not come in
a way that attracts attention: it comes by wisdom. The Kingdom of God is among
you,' said Jesus, and it is this action of the Holy Spirit, which gives us
wisdom and peace.”
“The Kingdom of God does not come in (a state of) confusion, just as God
did not speak to the prophet Elijah in the wind, in the storm (but) he spoke in
the soft breeze, the breeze of wisdom. Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus would
say that she always had to stop herself before the spirit of curiosity,"
he said. "When she spoke with another sister and this sister was telling a
story about the family, about people, sometimes the subject would change, and
she would want to know the end of the story. But she felt that this was not the
spirit of God, because it was a spirit of dispersion, of curiosity. The Kingdom
of God is among us: do not seek strange things, do not seek novelties with this
worldly curiosity. Let us allow the Spirit to lead us forward in that wisdom,
which is like a soft breeze," he said. "This is the Spirit of the
Kingdom of God, of which Jesus speaks. So be it.”
[End of address]
Howard Kainz, in his perceptive article “Can You Trust Medjugorje?” (2012), has also
offered some pertinent comments (http://catholicexchange.com/can-you-trust-medjugorje):
.... Compared to approved apparitions of the
Blessed Virgin, for example, at Lourdes and at Fatima, the alleged apparitions
at Medjugorje contain numerous anomalous aspects:
In the initial appearances, the Gospa [Croatian word for "Madonna"] appears out of a cloud of light
which gradually takes on the image of a young woman in her late teens.
She has blue eyes and is wearing a gray dress. She looks like she is
holding “something like a baby” in her arms, but none of the features of the
baby can be seen. Her hands are shaking. She laughs. The
visionaries are able to touch and kiss her, but her vestments are “steel to the
touch.” When a lady doctor asked if she could touch her also, the Gospa
agreed, but complained about “unbelieving Judases.”
….
Fr. René Laurentin, a supporter of Medjugorje, in his Chronological
Corpus of the Messages, changed this obvious blooper to “doubting Thomases.”
In the first few years following the
apparitions, around thirty different apparition places were chosen, with the
Gospa appearing often as if “on cue.” Some of the messages, even in our
open-minded era, would be categorized as not just heterodox, but
heretical. We hear that all religions are equal (“Before God all the
faiths are identical. God governs them like a king in his kingdom.”) All
sufferings are equal in hell; and Mirjana quotes the Gospa as telling her that
people begin feeling comfortable in hell.
Mirjana
As regards the afterlife, those who go to
heaven after death “are present with the soul and the body.” When the Madonna
is asked about the title, “Mediatrix of all graces,” she replies, “I do not
dispose of all graces.”
Although Medjugorje claims to be a continuation
of Fatima and the “last appearance of Jesus or Mary on earth,” there is
strangely no exhortation to the devotion of the Five First Saturdays, which Our
Lady of Fatima asked for in reparation for the five kinds of offenses and
blasphemies against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
[End of quotes]
I, however, have taken very seriously that
heavenly request for the Communion of Reparation devotion we Catholics know as
the Five First Saturdays, having written this book on it:
The Five First Saturdays of Our Lady of Fatima
In it I continually lay stress upon the factor
of obedience, which characterises all
genuine seers (e.g. Sister Lucia of Fatima) and holy people, but which is quite
notably lacking amongst false prophets and false apparitionists.
Kainz tells how Medjugorje is rife with
disobedience to legitimate Church authority:
Unlike the approved apparitions, the
visionaries at Medjugorje have been consistently disobedient to local
bishops.
- December 19, 1981, Vicka in her Notebook writes that their bishop, Pavao Zanic, was “the more guilty party” in conflict with the Franciscans, and the Gospa defended the Franciscans who were disobeying the bishop’s order to share their parish with secular clergy.
- June 21, 1983, in a letter the visionary Ivan said that the Gospa demanded the Bishop’s “immediate conversion” and that he should stop emphasizing the “negative side”– otherwise she and her Son would punish him.
- February 3, 1985 the Gospa told three visionaries that Fr. Barbaric, whose removal was requested by the bishop, should stay.
According to the German theologian, Manfred
Hauke, the Gospa urged disobedience thirteen times to Bishop Zanic, who had originally
been inclined favorably to the apparitions.
[End of quote]
But
Bishop Pavao Žanić
would later become a most hostile
critic of the supposed apparitions. Here I quote just the concluding section of
a statement that he made in 1987, the full account of which can be read at
EWTN: https://www.ewtn.com/library/BISHOPS/ZANICMED.HTM The “great sign” of the inauthenticity of the ‘apparitions’ for Bishop Žanić
was the failure for the promised Great Sign of Medjugorje ever to materialise:
….
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 rumors 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
“Make them
stop fabricating messages in your name”.
As Pope Francis said: “Our Lady is the Mother of everyone! And she loves all of us. She is not
a postmistress, who sends messages every day”.
Devotées of Medjugorje will clutch at any and
every sign. Like Rosary beads supposedly changing colour. {The wristband of my $7.00
‘gold’ watch from Target has recently developed a green tinge about it. I do
not regard this as being any kind of miracle}. Anyway, Kainz goes on to tell of
false miracles and false prophecies (attesting to false prophets) at
Medjugorje:
Pilgrims to Medjugorje occasionally report
signs, such as the appearance of a gold tint on the chains of their rosaries,
and the phenomenon of a “dance of the sun,” in which the sun, seen by the naked
eye without causing harm, proceeds up and down in a yo-yo manner, emitting
various colors. The latter is obviously construed as a reenactment of the
famous “miracle of the sun” at Fatima, on October 13, 1917.
Mackey’s comment: For an account of a real Miracle of the Sun,
see my:
The Great Solar Miracle: Fatima October 13, 1917
Kainz continues:
“Healing” miracles have been reported, but none
have been tested by experts and verified.
On June 29, 1981, the Gospa announced that a
four-year-old boy would be healed, but this never happened. A sign from heaven
predicted by the visionaries for August 17, 1981, never
materialized. Ivan, in a signed statement, on May 9, 1982, said that a
sign would appear in six months – a “huge shrine in Medjugorje” in memory of
the Gospa’s apparitions. But this also never materialized. In 1983 the
visionaries said a “visible sign” would be left at Medjugorje in perpetuity.
But this has not happened.
In September, 1981, the prophecy that “Germany
and the U.S. will be destroyed … the Pope will be exiled to Turkey,” never took
place.
Nor did peace for Yugoslavia predicted by the
Gospa during the 80s. Yugoslavia broke up during the Bosnian war, 1992-95,
leading to the violent separation of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina from
Serbia.
[End of quote]
The irony of all of this is that the title
under which the “Gospa”, the Lady, or Madonna - whatever it may be - has chosen
to operate is that of “Queen of Peace”.
Cloven Print of
Lucifer
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“Is it conceivable that starting in 1981, the
devil, looking over his victories and concerned that his time might be coming
to an end, might look to subvert the Church with something like a
pretend-Madonna?”
Howard Kainz.
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To whatever extent he was involved at the
beginning, the Devil would certainly want to cash in on an enterprise as
deceptively effective as is the phenomenon of Medjugorje. The point would be to
engender a spirit of disobedience¸which
poisons any sacrificial works (I Samuel 15:22): ‘Does the LORD delight
in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is
better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams’.
False apparitions also create
false timetables and outcomes. For, whilst the Gospa brought the following good
news to the ‘seers’ about a Third World War:
July 12, 1982
Concerning a third
world war: "The third world war will not take place."
Pope Francis, who has been speaking of our
current situation as “piecemeal Third World War” - of which the recent ISIS
attacks upon Paris were a manifestation - has now just lamented (http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-the-lord-weeps-for-the-sins-of-a-worl):
“What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst
of which we are living now?”
(Vatican
Radio) “The whole world is at war,” and the rejection of the “path of peace”
means that God Himself, that Jesus Himself, weeps. This was the message of Pope
Francis to the faithful following the readings of the day at Mass on Thursday
morning in the Casa Santa Marta.
“Jesus
wept.” These were the words with which the Holy Father’s remarks following the
readings of the day began on Thursday in the chapel of the Santa Marta
residence in the Vatican, echoing the words of St. Luke the Evangelist, from
whose Gospel the Gospel reading was taken.
A
world festively bedecked
Jesus
approaches Jerusalem, and seeing the city on a hill from a distance, weeps, and
says, “If this day you only knew what makes for peace–but now it is hidden from
your eyes.” Pope Francis repeated the words of Our Lord to the Holy City, and
then added: “Today Jesus weeps as well: because we have chosen the way of war,
the way of hatred, the way of enmities. We are close to Christmas: there will
be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all
decked out – while the world continues to wage war. The world has not
understood the way of peace.”
Pope Francis is entirely correct, I believe, in
likening our current situation to the diabolical catastrophe of which Jesus
Christ warned in his Olivet discourse, because our times are running a kind of eerie
parallel with the (largely already accomplished) events of the Apocalypse:
Book of Revelation Theme: The Bride and the Reject
Kainz’s description of the manic psychobabbling
medium of Medjugorje as “a pretend-Madonna” accords nicely with a description
of it that I have used at various times:
“The Madonna of the
Antichrist”
And I fully agree with what he has to say here
about it:
In 1884, Pope Leo XIII had a vision in which he listened to a dialogue
taking place between God and Satan. Satan boasted that he could destroy
the Church, if only God would remove some of the restraints on his power and
give him a hundred years. God answered, “So be it,” causing the Pope,
fearful for the coming trials of the Church, to compose the prayer for
protection to St. Michael, recited at the end of Mass until 1964.
Is it conceivable that starting in 1981, the
devil, looking over his victories and concerned that his time might be coming
to an end, might look to subvert the Church with something like a
pretend-Madonna? Jesus warned us (Mt. 24:24, Mk. 13:22) that in the final days
prophets would arise with signs and wonders, and would be able to deceive even
the elect.
For the Spirit of Evil, with no interest in goodness
or holiness, it would have to be “out of character” to appear as the holy Woman
whom he hates, and whose foot (Genesis 3:15) will finally crush his head. On
the other hand, what a tremendous victory it would be to get the devotion of
the faithful, drawing them in subtle ways to the devil’s own “religious
reeducation” project.
Mistakes might be made, of course. For
example, in 1982, one of Mirjana’s expected visions of the Gospa turned out to
be the devil, until it changed into the Madonna, apologizing and telling her
that this was just a trial. And on August 2, 1981, the Gospa allowed the people
present to come and touch her, but turned black; Marija explained that this was
because sinners were touching her, and they should go to confession.
Medjugorje is frequently touted as a
continuation of Fatima. At Fatima, Our Lady promised that eventually,
through the power of the rosary and fulfillment of her request of Mass
attendance on five first Saturdays, her Immaculate Heart would eventually triumph
and world peace would ensue. This might coincide with the end of the time given
to the devil. From the devil’s viewpoint, might not a distraction be in
order? Some traditional piety, with prayer and fasting, and a touch of “New
Age” spirituality? If Medjugorje were approved officially by the Church,
the devil’s feared triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart might be staved off
indefinitely.
Jesus told us to judge trees by their “fruits.” In Medjugorje, numerous conversions
have been reported, Catholics returning to the sacraments after many years,
etc. But the main fruit, and the fruit closest to the heart of the devil,
has been disobedience. Original sin came into the world not
through lust or greed or murder, but through disobedience; and the redemption
took place through the obedience of Jesus (Romans 5:19) and the fiat of
his mother. In Medjugorje, we are confronted with the counterintuitive
phenomenon of the Madonna encouraging disobedience to the successors of the
Apostles, and disobedience of some Franciscans to Vatican directives.
Other “fruits” include the massacres and
mutilations that took place from 1991 to 1992 when, because of the war, three
groups involved in the pilgrimage trade, losing business, turned on each other,
resulting in an estimated 80-140 deaths and 600 expulsions; and the revocation
of faculties or laicization of Frs. Zovko and Vlasic, guides of the visionaries
accused of sexual infractions. Nine Franciscans were also expelled from the
order and a divinis. According to historian Michael Sells,
religious nationalists in Medjugorje “cleansed” non-Catholics, destroying an
Orthodox monastery and murdering priests and monks. Bishop Perić was kidnapped
on April 2, 1994, in retaliation for his criticisms of unauthorized activities
in Medjugorje, and released only when the Mayor of Mostar intervened with UN
troops.
And so what are we to conclude? Bishop Perić’s
statement in
1997 still seems to be the most relevant:
On the basis of the serious study of the case
by 30 [academics], on my episcopal experience of five years in the Diocese, on
the scandalous disobedience that surrounds the phenomenon, on the lies that are
at times put into the mouth of the “Madonna,” on the unusual repetition of
“messages” for over 16 years, on the strange way that the “spiritual
directors”of the so-called “visionaries” accompany them throughout the world
making propaganda of them, on the practice that the “Madonna” appears at the
“fiat” (let her come!) of the “visionaries,” my conviction and position is
not only non constat de supernaturalitate (“no evidence of the supernatural”)
but also the other formula constat de non supernaturalitate (“evidence of the
non-supernatural character”) of the apparitions or revelations of Medjugorje.
Howard Kainz is professor emeritus at Marquette University.
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