Petrus has reported that a directory will soon be issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith setting out procedures for the investigation of alleged apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.The story has been picked up by the Telegraph and the Indie but the best source to read is the article from Petrus or the English translation which can be found at this link: Benedict XVI to crack down on Alleged Apparitions.
The rumour has an important bearing on the question of Medjugorje and particularly on the relationship of the shrine to the local Ordinary who "some time ago requested the alleged visionaries to live a hidden life and not disclose any message attributed to the Madonna."
15 comments:
Have been 5 times..might reprint my latest thinking where I review Donal Foley's 'Understanding Medjugorje'.
Finally!
Father George bloggingLOURDES
Oh how un-JP II of this Pope!
*sarcasm*
The Church needs this handbook.
The 1978 criteria for discernment of apparitions is good, but does not give the bishops the leverage they need to pull the plug sooner than later when contradictions arise.
For example, it was in 1985 that Bishop Zanic ordered the "seers" of Medjugorje into silence, and to stop publicizing messages.
Each message received today, since that date, has been obtained through an act of disobedience.
The original Petrus article points out that the handbook explains how people truly graced from above with heavenly visions have suffered considerably because of the directives of the local Church.
I found it interesting that Bishop Peric would make a public call again, for all involved with the messages to cease. Disobedience continued, and it was right about the time that a new commission was put underway. Since the new handbook says such disobedience to the bishop when he orders them into silence is enough to disqualify, it is a checkmate.
Pray for Bishop Peric. This man has carried an enormously heavy cross and I believe it is about to get heavier.
If the Vatican fully condemns Medjugorje, using criteria in this handbook to aid priests, bishops and faithful in understanding, an economic collapse of great magnitude will hit that region. The emotional, physical, spiritual and moral fallout will also be great.
I lived there from November of 1980 before it all began through February of 1983 and I can tell you there was nothing in that area but hills, tobacco fields, dirt roads, flocks of sheep, and people of very modest means.
Today, it is an area which has mushroomed on 2 million visitors yearly. This will fade suddenly should a condemnation come forth.
Good fruits must be weighed with bad fruits. False mystics have been responsible for getting people to pray, for a surge in vocations, for conversions, etc. Satan uses it because he knows that if he can pit anyone against the bishop - ultimately - the Church, he wins.
There is much calumny on the web aimed at the local bishop who is held in contempt by many Medjugorje followers. The Blessed Mother would never condone such contempt, not even in the heart. Even if he were wrong, she would strongly desire that people err on the side of filial obedience and reverence.
It would be great to see this handbook released on February 2 or 11th.
I have been twice to Medjugorje. I tried very hard to believe what was going on with Visionaries, with their counsels, Visions, locutions so on and so forth. But when I take a closer look at their lives, they have wealth and fame beyond their wildest dreams I cannot believe that Our Lady appeared to these children now adults who have grown up to decieve a lot of people. Bernadette and the children of Fatima could have had exactly the same worldly and fleeting net worth as these individuals have, but they chose the way of God, the narrowest gate, not mammon... I think Medjugorje is the biggest deception in History of the Church and mankind...people wake up everyone and smell the coffee!
What to make of this dramatic conversion story then?
http://salesianity.blogspot.com/search/label/conversion
And this is just one of many.
Medjugorje is a gift from God. The messages are a private revelation and not necessary for salvation as only Christ can supply that, but the messages can help point many to the way to Christ. Diane, if its not for you, that’s great. But why do you have so much negative energy to deprive others of what could help? You are fortunate that you are already living all the information contained in the Medjugorje messages. These are essentially prayer, fasting, reading the scriptures daily, taking the Eucharist, and confession. To say these message are diabolical is non-sense. Say what you will. We’ve heard it all before but you can’t change the fact that Medjugorje was responsible for bringing me to Christ after 20 years of agnosticism and showing me what true faith really means. If it weren’t for Medjugorje, I wouldn’t be in RCIA now. For me and so many thousands of others, Medjugorje has been a beautiful doorway to the Lord’s house. It is wonderful to finally come home.
Joan asks a good question, that many ask...What to make of this dramatic conversion story then?
To Joan and others who wonder such things, consider that God will turn every evil into something good - we will not necessarily know of it or see it in our life time. Hence, even an inauthentic apparition can be used by Him to do good things. This does not mean the Church should let it continue...
At my core, while I no longer believe in the authenticity of Medjugorje, I do believe that Our Lady has been taking good advantage of the situation and making great things happen for some people, most especially the innocent - those who are not connected to falsifications of any kind and are seeking to please God through this phenomena.
I'll go so far as to say that, if it is inauthentic, it will be condemned by Holy Mother Church when the Blessed Mother influences the Church as such. It won't end when we want, but when she wants, and in the way that she wants.
Medjugorje is the confession capital of Europe. But, fruits like these do not authenticate anything. In fact, no good fruit can be examined to the exclusion of bad fruits (and there are plenty that would astonish folks if they knew. Here is only one example of the kind of thing the bishop is dealing with on a regular basis.. He has mass chaos in his backyard and Medjugorje is intimately intertwined, even if only indirect.
For other chaos brought upon by the local Franciscans and associates, read through some of the examples in this Franciscn archive (the "punishment brought upon the order was not by the bishop, but from the Father General in Rome, and the Holy See itself, not the local bishop. When people criticize the bishop for the discipline which has befallen on certain priests, they are criticizing the Church herself.
There is literally "the Church" and a type of "pseudo-Church" in the area and many outsiders wouldn't know it. Medjugorje is basically a "front" for all of this.
Just read documents out of the diocese, such as the second link I provided and you will see. The Vatican has been active, systematically disciplining individual Franciscans for many years out of that province.
No matter how many conversion, confessions, Communions, fastings, processions, or even good works are taking place, the Church cannot cave in with consequentialism and permit it to continue if she has evidence that it is inauthentic.
Most especially - a Church under Pope Benedict - the greatest enemy of relativism, consequentialism, materialism, and many other "ism's!"
Fr. Tim,
Ottaviani’s humorous comment referring the previous Pope opens up one of the important big-picture aspects of Medjugorje – how it seemed to chime somehow with John Paul II’s pontificate, his Marianism, his grounding in mystical theology, his pastoral and liturgical style and the fact that he was a Slav from a Communist country - and Medjugorje is Slavic and was in a Communist country when the reports of Marian visions all started. There seemed to be a fit somehow.
I don’t think I’m the only person who suspects that Pope John Paul secretly sympathized with Medjugorje and was holding back a nervous Cardinal Ratzinger who, at the CDF, was perhaps closer to reports of the questionable and untoward goings-on associated with the phenomenon and would have preferred caution to permissiveness. For John Paul, “totus tuus” meant giving the benefit of the doubt to reported Marian phenomena, so Medjugorje was allowed to run on and the impression was given that the Vatican didn’t trust the local bishops’s judgement, so it was OK to ignore him. That impression – whether correctly based or not – allowed Medjugorje to gather momentum for 25 years.
The fact is that Medjugorje just seems a bit out of place under Pope Benedict – regardless of whether it’s true or false. It’s very “post-Vatican II”, charismatic, Taizé, and Novus Ordo. Benedict is none of the above and, although I believe he is deeply devoted to Our Lady, mysticism is not the point of departure of his personal spirituality. I’m not surprised about the stories that he is planning a much stricter regime for dealing with unapproved Marian apparitions. I think that this is the implementation of policies that he was recommending to Pope John Paul, but which were overruled.
Vatican Radio once interviewed someone who converted to the Catholic Church because Mary, he said, was appearing in Medjugorje.
That's a statement that would make Saint Bernadette vomit should it have been made about Lourdes. She was adamant that there is nothing new in Lourdes, that there is no special message, that Lourdes simply points to the Gospel.
One converts because of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church, because of the Family of Faith that we have, and that must be the "message" of anything in which the Church says that we can place our human trust without risk of hurting our faith.
Father George bloggingLOURDES
Have posted the review on my blog..
Francis, I have had thoughts along the same lines as you suggest since Pope Benedict XVI took the helm.
Fr. Tim --
How could the apparitions at Zeitoun be approved? Isn't the Coptic Orthodox Church in schism? It has its own pope. Do we recognized his decision that it is an authentic appearance of our Lady? Has Rome investigated and agreed that the mysterious apparitions that nobody can identify is authentic? Whoever appeared there hasn't even left a message to anyone in particular,that I have read in the accounts on the Internet. Even the name of the church isn't consistent ---St. Mary, St. Mark, etc.
What do you make of it all?
Richard
I don't get it
Just came across some theological observations on the Debra Movement and the Magnificat Meal Movement. I've never heard of either, but the commentary "Principles on Discernment of spirits" was most interesting. It quoted from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange's book, "The Three Ages of the Interior Life" [should that be Stages?] which lists the evil effects of having a desire for revelation being at least a venial sin, even when the soul has a good end in view. He writes: "St. John of the Cross strongly reproves the desire for revelations. On this point he is incomplete accord with St. Vomcent Ferrer, and shows that the soul desiring revelations is vain; that by this curiosity it gives the devil the opportunity to lead it astray; that this inclination takes away the purity of faith, produces a hindrance for the spirit, denotes a lack of humility and exposes it to many errors...
All this clearly shows the error of imprudent directors who, impelled by curiosity, are concerned with souls favored by visions and revelations. This curiosity is a deformation of spirit which casts the soul into illusion and trouble, and turns it away from humility through vain complacency in extraordinary ways."
St. John of the Cross concludes his chapter on this subject with the following: "The devil rejoices greatly when a soul seeks after revelations and is ready to accept them; for such conduct furnishes him with many opportunities of insinuating delusions, and derogating from the Faith as much as he possibly can; for such a soul becomes rough and rude, and falls frequently into many temptations and unseemly habits." (Ascent of Mt Carmel, Book 2, chapter 11)
The commentary concludes: The above texts, fruit of multi-secular experience, show that the prince of darkness is an expert at telling us something is very wrong, and then gradually making us do the very thing. He knows how to divert the attention on something else while he makes us do that very thing.
Something to think about!
Richard - I entirely agree. There sometimes seems to be a total lack of knowledge of the tradition of the Church's ascetical and mystical theology as expounded especially by St John of the Cross.
This also applies to many aspects of the charismatic movement where extraordinary gifts have been encouraged and sought after.
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