A MANIPULATIVE MARIAN THEOLOGIAN GAVE OXYGEN TO THE MEDJUGORJE HOAX

I recommend the book, Medjugorje After Fifteen Years by Michael Davies.

We are asked to believe by many that Jesus' other has been appearing to visionaries in Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia.  The apparitions are virtually countless.

The vision series has been popularised extremely well by the efforts of Fr Rene Laurentin. Even many Catholic sources have a bad opinion of him. He lied about Fr Zovko being appointed pastor of Medjugorje just a few days before the first vision and that Zovko did not know the visionaries (page 73, The Medjugorje Deception). Laurentin even went as far as to correct religious errors made by the apparition (page 78 ibid) for such errors would betray the human origin of the visions.

In a talk dated June 30, 1981, Ivanka told Fr Zovko the following when a woman asked to touch the Virgin Mary.

Ivanka: The Gospa said that there would always be incredulous Judases who would come to her.
Zovko: Judas wasn’t incredulous.

Ivanka: Incredulous. That means a traitor.

Zovko: A traitor is only an unbeliever if he hasn’t received the gift of faith. Thomas was incredulous. How did you come to say Judas?...

Ivanka: She said it. I didn’t... I heard it, we all heard it.

E Michael Jones found out that when Laurentin produced his definitive edition of what Mary was saying in her messages he simply changed Judas to Thomas.  He even went as far as to omit the dreadful message where Mary says a story that Jesus was going to destroy the world unless somebody gave Mary a bloody hanky was true. Laurentin was lying in omitting this for he was using Vicka's diary and that diary includes the hideous tale.

Here is the relevant entry in the diary, "Today, we waited for the Virgin at Marija's; with me were Marija, Ivanka, and Jakov. We began praying at 6:20 p.m. The Virgin appeared right away. We asked her about the Franciscan Friars and sisters of our parish...We asked her about the man who saw Jesus in the street as he was driving people in his car. He met a man covered in blood—this man was Jesus—he gave him a blood-stained handkerchief telling him to throw it in the river. Going on his way, he met a lady—it was the Blessed Virgin Mary; she asked the driver for the bloodstained handkerchief. The man offered her a handkerchief belonging to him, but the Virgin asked for the bloodstained one: 'If he had not given it to me it would have been the last judgment for all!' The Virgin said this was true."

Accordingly The Medjugorje Deception also states that he removed a blasphemous story about God going to destroy the world if a bloody handkerchief was refused to Mary from one of his books, for he wanted to cover up that the Virgin told Vicka that the tale was true (page 94, ibid).

Laurentin got a Professor Joyeux to test the visionaries and they wrote a book about how inexplicable it all was. There is proof that there were many lies told in this research. The visionaries had a lot to lose if they failed the tests and that could have enabled them to avoid reacting to bright light and sound and to the prick test.
 
In Fr Raymond Brown’s book, Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, we read about Laurentin and his dishonest methods. Laurentin frightens secular humanists who believe that religion is harmful with his promotion of apparitions and miracles. He once spoke up for a miracle that allegedly caused food to be multiplied in recent years! Laurentin is a good example of how religious people think and waste good time and good money for people silly enough to buy or value their tripe.

Laurentin wrote a book on the infancy stories about Jesus in the gospels which tends to solve the problems in them by looking at them from a pious and blind faith point of view to the detriment of the methods of historical analysis (20).

Laurentin once argued that Luke saw Mary as the Ark of the Covenant (74). That was pure dishonesty.
 
He wrote a foreword to a book that was filled with slander and bitter self-righteousness that attacked modern biblical critics (75).
 
He wrote at times in an emotional bigoted tone (76). He accused many Catholic scripture scholars of rationalism and positivism without any evidence (77).
 
He likes to distort the views that he does not like (79). He misrepresented Brown’s views on the annunciation and the Magnificat (79).
 
Brown notes a number of pages to exposing how Laurentin twists and distorts to trick people into accepting his views.
 
Page 80. He lied about Fitzmyer saying the virginal conception was fictitious though he knew his book well.
 
Brown was falsely accused of saying Mary was a symbol and that the virginal conception did not appear until Matthew and Luke were written.
 
Page 81. He was accused falsely of saying that he did not know if Joseph was Jesus’ dad or not and of saying that Mary received no revelation at the annunciation.
 
Page 156 makes a distinction between Laurentin’s misunderstanding and even misrepresenting the work of those scholars who are too liberal in scripture for him.

Laurentin believes the infancy stories are true for the writers went to the trouble of writing what they wrote instead of simply saying that Jesus came down from Heaven ready made (157). That is a naïve argument and he is not that naive.
 
Jesus was called the son of Joseph on five occasions and the son of Mary once for Joseph was dead but Laurentin says that Jesus had no father for nobody called him that in Nazareth (158).
 
That is pure speculation.
 
He translated the Bible as saying Mary was full of grace for that was St John Chrysostom’s interpretation. But he never checks if John did this because he thought of Mary in a way the author never thought of and because it suited the Mariology of his time.
 
He argues that since Paul described Jesus as born of woman it refers to the Virgin Birth. But the Old Testament says we are born of woman. The Jews used the expression for everybody (158).

Astonishingly, he argues that since Luke does not mention Mary at the cross she was there!
 
He lies about Jesus telling his parents that they did not understand that he had to be in God’s house as referring to his going back to his father after his death (159). Jesus was in the Temple at the time and it was God’s house. Jesus meant the Temple. To extract complicated interpretations from what is straightforward is a disgracefully dishonest approach (159).
 
He argues for the Virgin Birth on the basis of John 1:13 which has nothing to do with it at all. All the verse in question says is that some people are not born by the will of man but of God which does not mean that these men have not been procreated by men.
 
Because Son of God is mentioned before son of David in Luke 1:32 Laurentin assumes that it implies pre-existence. But the order could be because the title Son of God is more important than son of David. He just cares about what he wants to prove and options and thinking over all angles does not count.
 
Laurentin gives no proof that Matthew deliberately left out kings from his genealogy of Jesus but says he did. He gives no proof that it can fit the one in Luke but he says it does fit it. It actually contradicts it.

Laurentin argued that the infancy in Luke is true for it is too coherent to have been invented! Hasn’t he heard of novels?
 
Laurentin believed that the spirit that made Mary conceive in Matthew is female so there is no idea of a God having sex with a woman (160). Brown says this argument is unconvincing. I say the Holy Spirit could be God’s power in Mary to conceive without sexual intercourse. To say that Mary conceived by the Holy Spiritess is to say that Mary conceived without sex by her female composition which was a gift from God. In other words, God was believed to have done with her the same as he does with any woman who comes in contact with sperm and gets pregnant.

A notorious compendium of mysticism and apocalyptic fanaticism called The Thunder of Justice was published by Ted and Maureen Flynn whose integrity is disparaged even by conservative Catholics in the know. The book approves of messages from Heaven and visions that have never even been properly investigated. Typical of the book is the way the visions of Mount Mellary in Ireland are approved despite the fact that Ireland has grown more sinful and the Lady said in 1985 that great disasters that would punish sin would come if Ireland did not get holier in ten years (page 30). The visions of the Medjugorje fan Teresa Lopez who has got a good exposure for fraud, lies and religious deception by committed Catholics are cited as grounds for a Christian life. Yet on the back cover of the book Laurentin approves of this irresponsible book and calls Ted Flynn a realist and a prophet! He said the visions make discernment easy meaning discernment regarding the terrible future they forecast.
 
Laurentin is not to be trusted. When he lies and twists things in his Bible why trust him in apparitions and miracles which he believes are inferior to the Bible? 

OFFICIAL CHURCH DOCUMENTATION REFUTING THE APPARITIONS: http://members.tripod.com/~chonak/documents/medj_index.html
 
BOOKS CONSULTED

“I BEG YOU: LISTEN TO MY MESSAGES AND LIVE THEM,” Padraic Dunne, published privately, Drogheda, County Louth, 1992
BIBLICAL EXEGESIS AND CHURCH DOCTRINE, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1985
LOOKING FOR A MIRACLE, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993
MEDJUGORJE, David Baldwin, Catholic Truth Society, London, 2002
MEDJUGORJE HERALD, Vol 13, No 2, Feb 1999, Galway, Ireland
MEDJUGORJE, A TIME FOR TRUTH AND A TIME FOR ACTION, Denis Nolan
MEDJUGORJE, FACTS DOCUMENTS THEOLOGY, Fr Michael O Carroll, Veritas, Dublin, 1986
OUR LADY QUEEN OF PEACE, Tomislav Vlasic OFM, published by Peter Batty, East Sussex, 1984
POWERS OF DARKNESS, POWERS OF LIGHT, John Cornwell, Penguin, London, 1992
POWER OF THE WITCH, Laurie Cabot with Tom Cowan, Arkana, Penguin, London, 1992
QUEEN OF PEACE (Newspaper), Fall, 1995, Pittsburgh Center for Peace
SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL STUDIES ON THE APPARITIONS AT MEDJUGORJE Rene Laurentin and Henri Joyeux, Veritas, Dublin, 1987.
ST JOHN’S BULLETIN, Medjugorje by Br Michael of the Holy Trinity, Society of St Pius X, October-December 1992, no 32, Dublin
THE APPARITIONS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY TODAY, Rene Laurentin, Veritas, Dublin 1990
THE HIDDEN SIDE OF MEDJUGORJE, Fr Ivo Sivric, Ed. Psilog, Saint Francios Du Lac, Quebec, 1989
THE THUNDER OF JUSTICE, Ted and Maureen Flynn, MAXCOL, Vancouver, 1993
UNDERSTANDING MEDJUGORJE, HEAVENLY VISIONS OR RELIGIOUS ILLUSION? Donal Anthony Foley, Theotokos Books, Nottingham, 2006
VISIONS OF THE CHILDREN, Janice T Connell, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1992
WORDS FROM HEAVEN, Anonymous, Caritas of Birmingham, Sterrett, Alabama, 1996
 
The following books are available from Militia Immaculatae Trust, 35 New Bond Street, Leicester.

CRITERIA FOR DISCERNING APPARITIONS REGARDING THE EVENTS OF MEDJUGORJE by Monsignor Peric.
MEDJUGORJE – AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS, Michael Davies, Remnant Press, Minnesota, 1998.
MEDJUGORJE THE UNTOLD STORY, E Michael Jones Fidelity Press, 206 Marquette Ave, South Bend Indiana 46617, 1998.
MEDJUGORJE, Bishop Zanic, Mostar, 1990.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND MEDJUGORJE by Michael Mazza.
THE MEDJUGORJE DECEPTION, E Michael Jones, Fidelity Press, Indiana, 1998.
TWENTY QUESTIONS ABOUT MEDJUGORJE, Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D. Pangaeus Press, Dallas, 1999.
 
 
UNDERSTANDING MEDJUGORJE, HEAVENLY VISIONS OR RELIGIOUS ILLUSION? Donal Anthony Foley, Theotokos Books, Nottingham, 2006
 
To Order Understanding Medjugorje visit http://www.theotokos.org.uk or write to Theotokos Books, PO Box, 8570, Nottingham, England
 
Videos
 
VISIONS ON DEMAND, Network 5 International, 1997
DIVINE OR DECEIVED? COVER-UP, Network 5 International, 1998
 
Contact:
Network 5 International
PO Box 51
Liverpool
L69 3EE