I have been a huge fan of Medjugorje for many years, spreading its supposed messages at every opportunity in my daily dealings with relatives and friends. There have been websites that, by their titles alone, disparaged Medjugorje. I shunned them all, almost by instinct.
But the other day, a friend who had been to Medjugorje four times came home to tell me he would never go back and, almost pleadingly, urged me not to believe in the alleged apparitions there.
My friend said that while there were things holy in Medjugorje, such as the Masses and the Confessions, he got “bad feelings” during his last visit.
I quote my friend further: “The so-called visionaries of Medjugorje live in villas with vineyards and own second properties and maybe more. I witnessed (alleged visionary) Jakov in the hall behind St. James church ask people for money and hand around a box. I gave him nothing but some people were putting in 50 euros, etc.”
Years ago, Ivan, one of the alleged Medjugorje visionaries, was a guest at a university in Angeles City where he supposedly had an apparition before Mass. I and my mother were among the hundreds who filled up the gymnasium. The purported apparition happened before Mass, somewhere in a room near the stage, but limited to the presence of a select few, including a rich man who was known to have abandoned his wife to live with a young beauty queen. The purported apparition’s exclusivity was disconcerting, but I gave in to the thought that the man and his woman would likely emerge remorseful and changed. To this day, I have yet to hear of his conversion.
Ivan gave a talk after the Mass. I found him a bit arrogant and somewhat too self- confident of his being “visionary.” My faith in Medjugorje, however, was not shaken.
Last year, the Catholic News Agency quoted Italian media as saying that Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “met June 24 to discuss the alleged Marian apparitions in Medjugorje, reaching the conclusion that they are inauthentic, but recognizing the site as a place of prayer.”
Vatican watcher Gianluca Barile then wrote that “for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, in fact, the ‘apparitions’ do not have any supernatural character; therefore it is forbidden to the faithful to participate in the ‘ecstasy’ of the six ‘seers’, and the latter are prohibited from divulging the texts of the messages they supposedly receive from the Madonna.”
Barile said the negative judgement regarding the apparitions is based on inconsistent theological messages; the visionaries’ economic interests in the site; and their disobedience to the local bishop.
Noted Catholic writer Malachi Martin also observed that unlike other approved and non-approved-though-quite-credible Marian manifestations, the alleged Blessed Mother always had her feet hidden by her robe and never seen.
In relation to this, Martin cited Padre Pio’s experience of an apparition of what seemed to be the Blessed Mother. But when the good padre, now a saint, looked down, he realized it was diabolical and immediately ordered it to go away in Jesus name.
Martin said Padre Pio knew the apparition was the devil in disguise because its feet were not visible. In the approved apparitions in Fatima and Lourdes, the Blessed Mother’s feet were visible, as they were in the still unapproved alleged apparitions in Garabandal, Spain in the 1960’s.
This is not to assert that the visibility of the Blessed Mother’s feet is a standard parameter for judging the supernatural character of apparitions, but there’s something worth the note in this.
So would I go on promoting Medjugorje in this space? I am suspending judgement. This is one case wherein I ask readers to likewise do so and allow the Church its still pending judgement on the case.
But there are other Marian apparitions which, without doubt, can be believed without fear of being led astray, because they had the official imprimatur of the Catholic hierarchy.
Apart from the already well-known apparitions in Fatima and Lourdes, we have, in modern times, the apparitions in Kibeho in Rwanda and those in Akita, Japan which are fit to satisfy even the urges of the sensationalists.
