A Perth (Western Australian) correspondent has written to us the following letter on the subject of Medjugorje and Fr. Timothy Deeter, who is promoting it enthusiastically in the Archdiocese of Perth (30 December 2010):
Dear [Editor]
You may receive this missive in the New Year, thought the content of Marian Centre Newsletter [see next page] may interest “us” especially the blatant deception being pushed about the validity of Medjugorje.
Priest Tim Deeter is a priest kicked out of his diocese in America by his bishop – but accepted in the Perth Archdiocese by [Archbishop] Barry Hickey who allows him to peddle the “lies” throughout our Archdiocese and beyond .... Also the Catholic paper has advertised an appearance in our Cathedral of “Ivan” so called visionary in February 2011.
Fr. Tizio Bogoni is sponsoring him and Yolanda Nardizzi who is hand in glove with him and Archbishop Hickey – who by the way has visited Medjugorje several times along with the new Dean of our Cathedral Monsignor Keating whom they call the travelling pilgrim.
The damage these people do to true devotion to Our Lady and the message of Fatima by their actions in confusing people about Church approved visits of Our Lady is not only a scandal but (in my view) a sin against the true cult of Our Blessed Mother and an insult to Her Son and Our Lord.
Please pray for this Archdiocese and us ... as we pray daily for you and your apostolate ....
....
AMAIC: Certainly, our prayers are assured for the Archdiocese of Perth and for all those there who are trying to promote a true devotion to the most Blessed Virgin Mary.
Now follows that part of the Marian Centre Newsletter, from Western Australia, to which our correspondent has referred regarding Fr. Deeter [taken from pp. 2-3 of that Newsletter].
Marian Centre (WA)
NEWSLETTER
No: 119
MARCH 2010
......
O my God, relying on Thy infinite goodness and promises, I hope to obtain the pardon of my sins, the help of Thy grace, and life everlasting through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Redeemer.
….
FR TIM DEETER ON MEDJUGORJE
Q. Hasn't the Church forbidden pilgrimages to Medjugorje?
A. Since Medjugorje is not yet an officially approved apparition site, official pilgrimages, i.e., pilgrimages organised by a diocese and led by a bishop - are forbidden. However, the Vatican has repeatedly stated that Catholics are free to go to Medjugorje, and that they may bring along bishops and/or priests to minister to their needs.
Q. Isn't it a negative sign that the Church hasn't approved Medjugorje?
A. On the contrary, it is a positive sign that the Church is still investigating Medjugorje. If it were so obvious that Medjugorje were false, the Church would have shut it down years ago.
Q. Didn't the local bishop disapprove of Medjugorje and forbid people to go there?
A. Yes. However, the Yugoslav Bishops' Conference took the matter into its own hands and said that pilgrims could go there while investigations continued. Then, when war broke out in 1991, the Vatican took over the investigation. It said that, since the local bishop never convoked a formal theological or psychological inquiry into the events, and never even once met with any of the visionaries, his pronouncements were to be considered his personal opinion only.
Q. Why hasn't the Vatican approved Medjugorje?
A. The Vatican never approves any apparitions; the decision is left to the local bishop. Guadalupe, La Salette, Lourdes, the Rue de Bac, Fatima and all other ‘approved’ apparitions received their approval from the local bishop. However, due to the war in ex-Yugoslavia and the mishandling of the matter by the Bishop of Mostar, the Vatican has assumed responsibility for the ongoing investigation into Medjugorje. There is some hope that this case can be returned to the local bishops' conference, but that remains to be seen.
Q. I read in the media that a local Franciscan priest, who was the visionaries' spiritual director, got a nun pregnant and then was removed from the priesthood. Isn't that proof that Medjugorje is false?
A. It is true that one of the Franciscans then stationed in Medjugorje impregnated a woman and was reduced to the lay state. However, the media misconstrued several facts:
(1) the woman was a German lay person, not a nun; (2) the priest was never the visionaries' spiritual director, but had only spoken with one visionary on four occasions, after which she avoided his counsel; (3) the affair occurred in 1977, whereas the apparitions began in 1981; (4) the priest was removed From the priesthood in 2009; (5) the Vatican explicitly stated at the time of the priest's removal that this affair had absolutely no bearing upon the ongoing investigation into Medjugorje, and that pilgrims are still free to go there. That said, think about this: if a priest in trouble were a sign that Medjugorje is false then what should be believed about the Church, considering the popes, bishops, priests, religious and lay people who have at times been unfaithful to God's commandments?
Does this mean that God is not present in the Church? Of course not.
Q. I've heard that the visionaries live in large houses and are making a lot of money. Is this true?
A. No. Several of the visionaries have built large houses which have rooms for pilgrims, but the visionaries' families live in only a few rooms of the house; and the visionaries cook, clean, and serve in these pilgrim hostels. They barely make ends meet. Several of the visionaries travel to speak at conferences, etc. and are given an honorarium for their talks; but again, this is not a living wage. Most of the visionaries' spouses work and provide for their families.
Fr Tim Deeter
For the best antidote to Medjugorje: Fatima, read on.
Understanding Medjugorje Book
Review which appeared in
the Brandsma Review (Issue 84)
Probably the worst thing about Medjugorje, believes Foley, is the way it has obscured the message of Fatima, which is still absolutely crucial for our times.
Understanding Medjugorje review - ISBN 0955074606
CLEARING THE MEDJUGORJE MINEFIELD By NICK LOWRY, a review of UNDERSTANDING MEDJUGORJE: Heavenly Visions or Religious Illusion?, by Donal Anthony Foley
…. Foley's previous work, Marian Apparitions and the Modern World (Gracewing, 2002) examined the major Marian apparitions of the past five centuries, showing how each apparition is connected with the scriptural types of Mary found in the Bible. This earlier book-as Fr Aidan Nichols OP pointed out in the foreword-avoided the opposing extremes of scepticism and credulity. Foley is well qualified to enter the Medjugorje minefield. He is no lightweight, having degrees in Humanities and Theology, and his work has appeared in the orthodox American publication The Homiletic and Pastoral Review.
….
Probably the worst thing about Medjugorje, believes Foley, is the way it has obscured the message of Fatima, which is still absolutely crucial for our times. "It [Fatima] represents an unprecedented intervention on the part of the Blessed Virgin in order to bring back to Christ a world which is increasingly denying and rejecting the Gospel of eternal salvation..."
As Foley pointed out in his earlier work, the devotion to Mary proposed at Fatima is both a guarantee of individual salvation and a necessity for the world if there is to be true peace. The main problem with Medjugorje is that it is diverting the faithful away from Fatima, and risking their estrangement from the true life of the Church.
Chequered history
…. In the 1920s the Franciscans, who had heroically stayed with their people during the centuries-long Turkish occupation, refused to hand over their parishes to the local Ordinary, even when ordered by Rome. They were still in a state of active disobedience by the time the visions began in the early 1980s. The revolt culminated in 1995 with a physical attack on the local Ordinary, Bishop Ratko Peric by a mob sympathetic to the Franciscans.
So, as Foley says, this is not a normal Catholic culture, "but one with a strange and chequered history, comprising heretical sects, pagan religion, seemingly endless violence, and a long-running dispute between the official Church and the Franciscans".
In his third chapter, Foley tackles the question whether the visions are genuine or not. Most testimonies are based on interviews which took place about 18 months after the first alleged visits of the Blessed Virgin, when memories could well be at fault.
He goes to the little-known primary source material, taped during the first few days of the apparitions. As he points out, they are a severe embarrassment to proponents of Medjugorje; it emerges that the apparitions, which have now been going on for a quarter of a century, were supposed to end after three more days-on July 3rd, 1981.
So what did happen? Foley believes the visionaries certainly saw something on that bleak hillside outside Medjugorje - at least in the earliest days - but not the Blessed Virgin. The whole thing is so bizarre, indeed "tacky", that one would have to agree that it cannot have been Our Lady. First, there is evidence that some of the visionaries may have been on drugs. They had certainly been smoking. The testimonies of Ivan Dragicevic and Vicka Ivancovic are particularly strange. Ivan said the hands of the vision were "trembling", while Vicka reported: "We kept touching her and kissing her, and she kept laughing." But at that stage she didn't speak. As Foley says:
None of this accords with the supreme, calm presence of the Blessed Virgin, speaking words of reassurance to those who have been favoured with her presence, that one finds in her recently recognised apparitions. But conversely, it does seem that some people did see strange lights, and so we do not appear to be dealing with hallucinations. It appeared that something was happening up there on Podbrdo, but the exact nature of that "something" had still to be determined.
It is interesting, too, that the "Gospa" gradually appeared in an indistinct form out of a cloud or mist. That is not a mark of genuine Marian visions, but is one of the main characteristics of false or suspect visions-such as those which followed the genuine apparitions at Lourdes.
Diabolical origin?
He then asks the disturbing question: whether what the visionaries saw in the early days was in fact of diabolical origin? The strange phenomena, untypical of Marian apparitions would point to this possibility in the early days, but Foley believes the later ecstasies, which took place in the church, were more likely self-induced trances. There is also a very strong possibility that the later manifestations have been to a large extent stage-managed by the Franciscans.
As news of the visions spread, pilgrims began flocking to Medjugorje, and the seers would spend quite a lot of time laying hands on them or "blessing" pious objects for them. What a contrast to Fatima, where young Francisco told an old woman: "I could not give a blessing .... Only priests do that." It appears, in fact that a mixture of magic and Christian rituals has grown up around the Medjugorje visionaries, who are being treated by some as pseudo-priests or folk doctors with special powers. Foley points out that for generations people in Medjugorje have been living in a primitive spiritual universe, believing in a "middle field" between good and evil which could be influenced by occult practices.
Dottiness and banality
Perhaps the most telling evidence against the authenticity of Medjugorje is the sheer dottiness of some of the things Our Lady is alleged to have said (leaving aside the utter banality of the daily messages). For instance, there is the so-called, "bloody handkerchief" incident, written by Vicka in her diary. This concerned a meeting between a "driver" and a man covered in blood - apparently Our Lord Himself - who ordered that a handkerchief soaked in blood should be thrown into a river:
This driver then met Mary who asked for the handkerchief, although he was apparently reluctant to hand it over. Then the Blessed Virgin reportedly said, "If you had not given it to me that would have been the end of the world. Vicka stated categorically that: "The Gospa said that was the truth."
To swallow anything like that you would need not simple faith, but the digestion of an ostrich. One does not need to consult theological experts in order to discern nonsense. In these interminable messages, the "Gospa" repeatedly signs off by saying: "Thank you for having responded to my call." As Foley notes, this suggests that people are conferring a favour on Our Lady. It is without precedent in any approved apparitions. Sometimes the encounters with the "Gospa" descend to the level of farce. In the early 1980s one of the visionaries, Jakov, asked her how his favourite football team had fared in a match-causing the others to burst out laughing.
Yet in spite of all the difficulties - involving both the seers themselves and the Franciscans most involved with them - from the publicity surrounding Medjugorje you would think it was all perfectly acceptable in a religious sense. ….
