By
Howard Kainz at
Crisis Magazine
Last week I received a mailing from Caritas of Birmingham,
in Sterret, Alabama. It was an invitation to come to the four-storey
Tabernacle of our Lady’s Messages at Caritas, where a visionary, Marija
Pavlovic Lunetti, is slated to receive five messages and apparitions
during the 2012 gathering from July 1 to July 5.
Caritas is a group devoted to the Medjugorje Marian apparitions in
Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is a continuation of international devotional
interest in a phenomenon beginning on June 24, 1981, when six young
people said they had received apparitions from the “Gospa” (Madonna).
I’m not sure how we got on to their mailing list. Possibly a relative
submitted our name and address.
| "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." - Bishop Ratko Perić (who was kidnapped on April 2, 1994, in retaliation for his criticisms of unauthorized activities in Medjugorje) |
The Caritas group, however, is considered schismatic by the
visionaries and priests at the pilgrimage center, in a part of what used
to be Yugoslavia. On the “official”
Medjugorje website we are warned that Caritas of Birmingham is a cult, something like a religious business, not approved.
But one of the visionaries, Marija, still comes regularly to Caritas
in Birmingham, contributing to a local, in-house schism of an
international cult that bespeaks a larger and ongoing schism with
orthodox Catholicism.
Numerous books have been written on Medjugorje, most of them
favorable. But most of the pro-Medjugorje books ignore the early tapes
made by Fr. Cuvalo and Fr. Zovko, on the days immediately following the
apparitions, which began on June 24, 1981; they are based on interviews
recorded over a year after the original visions, and incorporated in the
1985 book,
A Thousand Encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje.
And none of them take into account the first tape made by Fr. Cuvalo
before Fr. Zovko took over the taping of interviews with the
visionaries.
But Donal Foley’s book,
Medjugorje Revisited: 30 years of Visions or Religious Fraud?
does take into account early tapes as well as later sources, brings out
some crucial differences in the early and later transcripts, and leads
the reflective reader to serious doubts about what is really happening
at this pilgrimage center.
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 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. 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.
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.
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. “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.
The visionaries allege that they have received secrets from the
Gospa. Jakov Colo, Ivan Dragicevic and Ivanka Ivankovic have each
received nine, while the others have received all ten. Only one of the
secrets has been revealed by the visionaries: Namely, the Gospa’s
promise of a “visible sign,” mentioned above.
On June 30, 1981, the Gospa said that her appearances would end in
three days, but they went on without interruption. As of 2004, over
33,000 messages had been delivered by the Gospa. The number now is
around 40,000. Three of the visionaries, Ivan, Vicka and Marija, still
have daily visions. We are dealing with a Madonna who, in contrast with
the authorized apparitions, has become extremely talkative. If we
weren’t referring to heavenly personages, the category of “personality
change” would suggest itself.
Numerous attempts have been made to subject the visionaries to
testing by experts. However, when experts came from various countries
in 1984, 1987, 1988, 1992 and 1995, to test the visionaries, they either
claimed to be sick, or that Our Lady had “paused” in her appearances,
or they simply did not cooperate.
During the tests on October 6-7, 1984, of the visionaries during
ecstasy, Dr. Philippot, an ophthalmologist, found that the pupil of the
visionaries did react to light. Once, when the visionaries were being
filmed during ecstasy, a skeptical pilgrim made movements with his two
fingers towards the eyes of Vicka in ecstasy, and she reacted by moving
her head back; later she explained that this was because she thought the
Blessed Virgin was about to drop the baby Jesus, and she wanted to keep
him from falling.
Both Pavao Zanic and Ratko Perić, the bishops who have had
jurisdiction over Medjugorje since 1981, have concluded that the
apparitions are not of supernatural origin. Nineteen out of 20 bishops
in the Yugoslav Episcopal Conference in 1991 issued the Zadar
declaration: “On the basis of investigation up till now, it cannot be
established that one is dealing with supernatural apparitions and
revelations...” (
continued)
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