TESTS ON MEDJUGORJE "VISIONS"

Has the Virgin Mary, under the title of Our Lady, Queen of Peace been appearing in Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia since 1981? Six young people have reported these visions and have been subjected to tests.

SCIENTIFIC STUDIES DONE ON THE VISIONARIES OF MEDJUGORJE – 1998 SCIENTIFIC STUDY ON THE VISIONARIES admits that the investigation which was on a psycho-physiological basis was incomplete because the subjects, the visionaries, were not keen and a bit uncooperative and complained about family and social obligations that had to be put first. This report ruled out the possibility that the children were hypnotised. But it dishonestly left out the possibility that hypnosis was used to get them to do the other things that seemed usual. In other words, they might not be in hypnotic trances but hypnosis could be used to train and manipulate their behaviour so that they see the Virgin at the exact same time for instance.
 
All the authorities agree that you cannot be persuaded to do anything you consider immoral in hypnosis. Yet Marija told the ten secrets under hypnosis to Dr Stopar (114, Scientific and Medical Studies, etc.). She would not reveal them to him before that in her right mind. Marija was faking for no trick was done to make her think it would be moral to tell and she would not have wanted her reluctance to tell removed. She faked the trance to make it look as if her visions were real which suggests that she was making them up. She was pretending that hypnosis made her tell because she believed what nearly everybody believes is that hypnosis can make you do what you think is bad.
  
But Briefly…
 
In the documentary Apparitions of the Virgin Mary says it (Galaxie Productions, Amaya Films, 2000) we are told by a visionary that the visionaries touched the Virgin the first time she appeared. This is worrying for it made the children relics of the Virgin Mary and elevated them to that state much too quickly. We know how much relics are glorified and adored in the Catholic faith. St John of the Cross taught that we must always fly away from visions for they are so dangerous and make us different from ordinary people and can become like a drug. He said visions are more likely to be false the more corporeal and touchable they are (page 257, 258). According to him a vision that speaks more to the soul than the mind and emotions and senses is most likely to be from God for it develops spiritually. Nevertheless, I would say that such visions are the only ones that could be from God. Medjugorje is famous for a three-dimensional Virgin who looks, feels and sounds like a normal person so the apparition is not Mary.

How Catholics can regard such a vision as false and say they believe in tangible and material apparitions of Jesus in which the resurrection was revealed is a mystery!
 
On one occasion Jacov was to touch the apparition under test to see if he was touching anything and he forgot to ask her permission and she left and it was not done. How convenient and why did Mary not remind him when she said that she did not mind the tests? They all looked up at the vision at the one time and no evidence of signalling was found. Perhaps they had electronic devices on their person that jabbed them at the right time or the signal was given earlier and they had to inwardly count at a trained rate so that they would raise their eyes at the exact same moment without any obvious link with the signal. But there are several eyewitness testimonies that the children did act as if they were signalling so that they could get down on their knees to signify that the ecstasy and the vision was happening. Patricia Waters, once a devoted follower of Medjugorje, was interviewed as one such witness on the video Divine or Deceived? The same video provides evidence that the visionaries have been making money and indeed had to have been out of the alleged appearances.
 
According to Medjugorje Revisited: 30 Years of Visions or Religious Fraud, a test to see if the visionaries could touch the Virgin Mary was devised. It was going to involve filming their hands carefully to see where they stopped. This was to check if there were signs that there was something there. Jakov was up for the test and got out of it by claiming he forgot to ask the Virgin's permission. Ivanka and Marija said the Virgin refused to agree.
 
The same book reminds us how careless the tests were that were done on the visionaries. The testers said the visionaries were undisturbed by having a card placed in front of their eyes during a vision. But the card was so small it was no wonder!
 
The miracle of the visionaries kneeling down all at once when the lady appears to them is a myth. Video clips show them kneeling at different speeds. This is very serious as they allegedly kneel the second the Virgin appears to them. The differences imply they are only pretending that she has come.
 
The visionaries say they have no connection with the outside world when they have their vision. But in 1984 a French cameraman pretended to be about to stab Vicka Ivankovic in the eyes with his fingers. She jumped and jerked her head away from him and later it was explained by her that she thought Mary was going to drop her baby Jesus and she was going to grab him! But then why did she jerk away from the Lady? This incident was recorded on tape and was once shown on a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary. If they were seeing anything they would know that Mary would not be so inept that she would drop the baby for she was full of God’s power. Notice again that her and the other visionary are not looking in the same direction. Notice that she has a serene face not like somebody that was trying to catch the baby Jesus. The hands are still tightly clasped. Yet the site showing this picture was written up by a psychiatrist who claimed she reacted not at the man but at something else that nobody else could see! This shows that the pro-Medjugorje researchers are not to be trusted.
 
Fr Vlasic is in the picture too looking on and shows no reaction. He was according to many one big role-player in the Medjugorje fraud. He doesn’t react at the assault on Vicka because he knows something like it had to happen sometime so he was prepared. And the reason he was so determined to act so calmly was so that he might not upset the visionaries who had to look serene and detached from their surroundings.
 
What about the research of Dr Giorgio Gagliardi who was involved in the 1985 medical testing of the visionaries as they claimed to have a vision? A world leader in research in Medical and Experimental Hypnosis he sees nothing supernatural in the visions or anything to do with them. He was interviewed on the Network 5 video, Divine or Deceived? The promoters just want to mention experts who seem to back up their views and what they want to be true. The same video contains testimony that Fr Slavko Barbaric one of the main advisors and recorder of Mary’s messages told people to leave the sacristy one time for their presence prevented the apparition from appearing! An apparition that is controlled by men is definitely a false one. The false visionary Ivan was proven by footage to have lied about having bad English though his wife was English-speaking. The document he filled out under oath that the sign predicted by the Virgin was stated by her to be due to happen in June 1982 was displayed in the video. Everybody mentioned in the video was given right of reply. Enough said! Fr Barbaric also approved of the phoney revelations of Teresa Lopez according to the shocking book, The Medjugorje Deception. It is a concern when the visionaries need such dubious people for guidance.

The Scientific Tests on the Medjugorje Seers: A Critical Study By Prof. Théophile Kammerer, President of the Lourdes International Medical Committee (1986)

In 1986, the President of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes, prof. Théophile Kammerer, was asked by an Italian physician, Dr. Cherubino Trabucchi, to examine the scientific dossiers on the Medjugorje visionaries and to give his authoritative opinion.

As a result, Prof. Kammerer exposed to colleagues of the Committee, at its meeting on 20 September 1986, a critical report.

The professor highlighted the inconclusive nature of the reports, as recognized by Father Rene Laurentin, who has been the most famous defender of Medjugorje in the world:

Professor Kammerer prepared a critical report on these Italian works and on those of the French team (at issue in our book: Henri Joyeux and Rene Laurentin Études médicales...) and proposed to discuss it with the International Medical Committee of Lourdes, at its meeting of 20-21 September 1986, at Lourdes. [...] The findings of the President Kammerer remain cautious. The philosophical positions of the eminent psychiatrist are in the critical current in respect of apparitions and miracles.

[R. Laurentin, Dernières nouvelles de Medjugorje, No 7, O.E.I.L., Paris, December 1988, pp. 24-25]