CLAIMS THAT AN OCCULT ENTITY IS BEHIND THE MEDJUGORJE VISIONS OF "MARY"

In 1981, on June 24th, a strange report heralded the beginning of the Medjugorje industry. Six children reported seeing a shape standing up a hill. The next day four of these with a few others went back to the hill and they got a closer look at the figure who said she was the Virgin Mary. Soon the Lady began to appear to them in the parish Church of Medjugorje. The seers are: Vicka Ivankovic, Mirjana Dragicevic, Marija Pavlovic, Ivan Dragicevic, Ivanka Ivankovic and Jakov Colo. She gave them ten secrets which prophesy the future. Only some of the visionaries report seeing the Lady on a daily basis. The Lady stopped appearing to the rest except on special occasions.

There are grave doubts that the visions are really of Jesus' mother.

Fr Michael O Carroll who is a member of the Pontifical Marian Academy and of the French Society for Marian Studies is a promoter of Medjugorje. He has joined with the devious Fr Rene Laurentin to do it and his praise for him knows no bounds.

Fr O Carroll’s book is called Medjugorje, Facts, Documents and Theology and was published by Veritas of Dublin.
 
Fr Karl Rahner is quoted with approval on page 11 as saying that visions from God can be faked with telepathy, mediumistic ability and telekinetic powers. When such powers might explain Medjugorje it shows the unhealthy bias of Fr O Carroll when he declares that the apparitions are true. O Carroll condemned Bishop Zanic for saying the visions of Medjugorje were collective hallucinations for science had supposedly proven they were not. But the bishop may have meant psychic hallucination not hallucination in the way medical science would comprehend it.  The bishop was well aware of what the psychiatric team said and there was no way he meant a mundane hallucination.  It was a hallucination out of the ordinary.
 
Chapter 3, has a transcript of Vicka’s testimony. During the first appearance, three children were seeing the apparitions and they were staring at something and were frightened though they told Vicka it was the Virgin. Fear is usually taken to be a sign that something satanic is happening. They were spiritually and emotionally disturbed by the vision. And why were the three able to know that Vicka was present when the apparition supposedly puts them into ecstasy?
 
Ivan Dragicevic could not see the Virgin clearly which is another indication of lying or non-divine origin. The Virgin would not half-appear.
 
Soon in imitation of Fatima, the Virgin told Vicka something that the visionaries Marijah and Jacov said they never heard but which only she could hear though there was no reason for privacy (page 28). Mary only told her that her mother was in Heaven.
 
Vicka reported that they asked Mary for a sign to stop people saying they were making it all up. And the hands of Mirjana’s watch began behaving as if arrested by some magical force. The man taking the testimony, Bubalo, said that that was no good for it was impossible to check. Here we have Mary giving a weak sign that nobody could verify and one that was too insignificant. Also, she never chided them for looking for signs. Jesus told the Jews off for seeking signs except the resurrection and said in the latter days even the elect could be deceived by the mighty wonders the false Christs and false prophets will perform which makes it incumbent on us to be totally sure a miracle has happened and that he will not do any there is any doubt about. He told his apostles to expect hardship and embrace it but this Lady says nothing. Correcting them later is no good.
 
The infamous incident where the Virgin gets her veil trampled on and she disappears for a few moments is reported in this chapter. Vicka said that the Virgin was not annoyed at the rude crowd for she is not like an ordinary person. The Virgin appeared three times that day. Vicka said she did not know why but the crowd were very bothersome. It seems that the Virgin was annoyed with the crowd. This Lady comes down from Heaven and finds she made a mistake and ends up trying to appear in peace three times! This is absurd. Why could she not put the children in ecstasy so that Vicka and they would not be complaining about the crowd? She was allegedly able to protect Bernadette and the Fatima children in situations like that. It is significant that the children could see the veil being trampled on and later they claimed that they lost awareness of everything except the blessed mother. The fact that God has mysterious ways is denied when the Virgin tells the visionaries that it is up to them how much and how long she will appear (page 35). Why does she not appear as much to some of them now? Why does she appear to them because they want it and to nobody else? God has mysterious and complicated plans and he has to work miracles into that plan so that they will not slow it down or thwart it so it is up to God and not people.
 
A little child who seemed to be dying was once mentioned to the Virgin who was asked to intercede for the cure. The Lady said that a lot of prayers must be said and belief must be strong implying that lack of prayer and belief will be responsible if the child dies (page 35). This insensitive idea has been employed by countless faith-healers.
 
A doctor once asked the visionaries if she could touch the Virgin who called her an unbelieving Judas and told the visionaries to let her try and touch her. The woman touched the Virgin’s shoulder and said nothing. But visitors in Vicka’s house claimed that she said she felt nothing but a shudder in her whole arm (page 36). It was offensive of the Virgin to use language like that and there was no need. And especially after the Church said that it was not a sin to disbelieve in a vision and especially one that was not authenticated or to take a lot of time before making up one’s mind for that means apparitions cannot judge. The Virgin is contradicting the Church. Moreover, Judas betrayed the things that have to be believed so the implication is that the woman was doing the same by wanting to feel the Virgin before she would believe. But we all shudder and the woman might have been afraid she would feel something which could have caused the feeling. There was always a lot of emotion and vibration in the air when an apparition was happening. We are told in the book that the doctor never came back which is bizarre if she really felt the Virgin. What is her name? Did she exist? She was sent by the Communists (page 35) implying she would never have admitted what the people in Vicka’s house said she admitted. It would not have been said to them. But it is strange that a shudder was reported. The Virgin evidently failed to make her feel her shoulder. We know plenty about Vicka and her truthfulness and so how truthful the witnesses, her friends, would have been. Bad company flocks together.

Page 46 says that Ivanka wrote that the Virgin brought her dead mother to her. Ivanka claimed that her mother told her she was proud of her and kissed her. Mary gave Ivanka a shocking message, "My dear child, today is our last meeting. Do not be sad because I will be coming to you on every anniversary except this year. Dear child, do not think you have done anything wrong or that this is the reason I will not be coming to you. No you did not. With all your heart you have accepted the plans which my Son and I had and you have done everything. No one on this earth has had the grace which you and your brothers and sisters have had."
 
Clearly this is Ivanka nauseatingly glorifying herself. Even if she had received such a message she would have kept it under wraps.
 
The Bishop has the right to decide what goes on his churches. Bishop Zanic would not have wanted the apparition to start happening in the Parish Church when he regarded it as false and anyway no apparition should be happening in a Church for the Church cannot decide if the apparition was really from God until after the apparition finishes. Yet the Virgin began appearing there early in 1982. No apparition however credible should be appearing in the house of God until the Church has declared that something is happening. There is the risk of fraud and delusion. Moreover, Zanic gave out a ban against the apparitions being held in the Church and despite this they were still held there. From August 1984 to April 1985 they happened in the Church against the bishop’s express command. That was extreme defiance for they could have had their vision elsewhere. Fr Rene Laurentin strangely states that after 1987 the visionaries had visions in the parish Church in a locked gallery even though he supports the visions and admits that the bishop banned apparitions from the Church (page 83, The Apparitions Of The Blessed Virgin Mary Today).
 
The Virgin appearing in the parish Church would mean that if there are any spiritual benefits for pilgrims say from visiting a Church they will get them and these benefits will be counted as coming from the apparition. So appearing in a Church or at a holy site implies that the vision is from Satan who is trying to steal the credit for the spiritual blessings. There can be no doubt that it is sacrilege for an apparition to appear in a Church. All agree that visions have to be tested and the Bible warns against failure to test every spirit meaning that is sacrilegious to put possibly false apparitions in Church. This means that there are hundreds of apparitions which have no fault from a Catholic perspective but that one and which suggests that it is a mistake to listen to anything an apparition says at all from an Humanist perspective.
 
Many in the Roman Church who claim to be able to discern if a vision is from Heaven accept the test of St Catherine of Siena, who noticed it was getting hard to tell the difference between true and false visions, that she got from Heaven in a vision. The test says that if you feel euphoric the moment when a vision appears it is not from God. Satan likes to make you feel good – it is the only way he can dupe you.
 
Some mystics disagree and hold that if your first sensation is fear then there is something amiss. It seems it is okay to be scared at the first vision but if it still happens with successive apparitions then there is something amiss. But this, like Catherine’s test, presupposes a psychic link between the vision and the witness. There is no need for this link and it infers that the mystic has psychic powers and thus it denies that the visions are really caused by an outside force such as a God.
 
The mystic should not be living by feelings but by getting to know the vision. St Paul said the Christian lives by faith not feelings. The feeling of fear could be caused by a fear of being asked to be very holy. You cannot authenticate an apparition just because somebody says they feel good about it for you don’t know how they feel. Catherine’s revelations, one of which denied that the Virgin Mary was conceived without sin, proves that it is a mistake to listen to any Roman Catholic visions. The Church says she misunderstood! That is only an excuse for Catherine never said she misunderstood anything. The Church will lie so that it can use her visions as evidence for the divine approval that the message of the Church is supposedly sanctioned with. No sane angel or saint would bother with appearing when a cult like that is the source of its authentication.

Radio Maria has a broadcast aired December 27 1988.  Vicka speaks on it.  Marija is asking Mary about Maria Valtorta's Poem of the Man-God.  Vicka reports that Marija was told by the vision, "They are true".  "Yes, yes, true".  "Authentic, yes".  "You can read these, they are true."  Yet with its errors about Jesus life and culture the Poem is plainly not true.  The accounts are remarkable for how similar they are to what psychics and mediums come up with about Jesus.
 
The visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich saw in her visions that the earthly paradise was on a mountain near Tibet, that Dionysus the Areopagite really wrote the heretical book ascribed to him, and added that Mary died thirteen years after the resurrection contradicting other visionaries, St Bridget of Sweden who said it was fourteen and Marie de Agreda who says twenty-one and also that it is everybody’s duties to believe in her visions and what she wrote about them! Joan of Arc was encouraged by the voices of the saints she heard from Heaven that she would have victory and she took it they meant she would not be martyred. She was right for they would have corrected her knowing what she was thinking. Some say the victory was her canonisation but that was not her doing. It was not her victory for canonisation depends on chance for there are many uncanonised saints. The fact is that the revelations even of saints are not reliable. Deuteronomy 18 says that people who err in what God has said or who give revelations that have been proven false are fakes and not to be listened to and even stoned to death. Why then should we trust the unsaintly and ordinary visionaries of Medjugorje?