Saturday, May 07, 2005
THE MEDJUGORJE DECEPTION CONTINUED
A few interesting passages:
By 1988 the number of pilgrims had increased exponentially, but so also had the negative evidence surrounding the apparitions. In April 1988 Father Sivric's book appeared in French....For the first time now, Zovko's initial interviews with the seers were in print with all of the damning evidence about the children saying that the Blessed Mother was going to appear for "three more days" as well as the joking and laughter and Zovko's insistence that the children have the apparitions in the church. All of this contradicted the official version of the initial apparitions, which was now spreading throughout the world on the BBC/Everyman video.
One month later, another scandal broke. In May of 1988, Ivica Vego, the priest which the Blessed Mother had defended in his battle with Bishop Zanic, announced that he had been having an affair with a nun stationed at Medjugorje and that the nun was pregnant.
"I turn to you," Vego wrote in an open letter that was cuasing severe consternation among the Franciscans at Medjugorje, "in the most difficult moment of my life. I have been a priest for 10 years. I was a punished priest for 10 years. Except for six weeks, jurisdiction has never been bestowed on me. Eight years ago I was punished by being expelled from my native land. For seven years I was punished with expulsion from the Franciscan order and suspended "a divinis" [in 1981]. Our lives and our work were thrown in to the street. We died!"
Vego fails to mention that during this time he continued to function as a priest at Medjugorje, saying Mass and hearing confessions in direct disobedience to the Church. (p. 147)
Jean Galot, S.J. published the criteria for evaluating apparitions in 1985 in the journal Civilta Cattolica. Jones writes:
Galot has...astringent things to say about the "fruits" argument. "It is not sufficient," he writes, "to use the spiritual fruits alone as the criterion to judge the authenticity of the apparitions. Cases are known in which conversions have been substantiated in which the pretended apparitions have later been rejected by the authority of the Church as without serious foundation."
Gailot then goes on to list the criteria the Church uses in ascertaining whether an alleged apparition is genuine or not. The frequency of an apparition, for example, is an argument against its authenticity because it would arouse the image of a Christian religion that was nourished much more by actual visions than by the revelation brought in the past by the coming of Christ on earth. Piety would develop more as a function of constant apparitions than by the leap of faith, or again faith would tend to become a faith in the truth of the apparitions and would be founded on the testimony of those who see.
One should be skeptical if the messages entail "threats of revenge" if the message is not accepted or if the seers spread abroad a spirit of "denigration or revolt or disobedience to the authority of the Church." In addition, one should look for "progressive psychological formation...If the words of the apparition have not been suggested in a human manner by the surroundings, by preceding conversations, or by the hymns or songs of the crowd or by the seers themselves."
"Evidence of human manipulation" would also be a sign of inauthenticity, especially "when the beneficiaries of the apparitions determine themselves the place, the date and the frequency of the program of the apparitions."
Given Galot's criteria, especially as expressed in a quasi-official Vatican journal, and given the events which occurred over the summer of 1988, it was clear that the Church could never give its approval to Medjugorje. (p. 149)
Since Jones demonstrates that the events surrounding Medjugorje have violated all of these prohibitions, his analysis is justified.
Medjugorje, apparently, is catching. One who caught it is a seer named Tonie Alcorn who is known to those who follow the seers as Therese Lopez. According to Dr. Jones, by the age of 27 she was already on her third marriage. Between 1989 and 1996 she had 24 different credit-card vilations and debt recovery notices, the result of her fondness for an expensive lifestyle. She did drugs and bought a Porsche she could not afford on her salary for managing a Wendy's restaurant. She was under the impression she could create money by writing checks. She was so indifferent to her 3-year-old daughter that she failed to appear in court in her divorce case and lost the custody of the child. She also had a son by an unknown father. She became involved in an affair with Jeff Lopez while married to her third husband, and moved in with Jeff before her third divorce, subsequently marrying him. In order to afford her expensive lifestyle, she cashed the mortgage checks Jeff wrote, and used the money they provided. Ultimately Jeff lost the house on which he thought he had been making regular payments.
She was converted into a seer by the death of her second daughter Stephanie, and by the discovery, as Jones put it, that "a lot of money was changing hands in the circles surrounding Medjugorje in the United States, and when Therese understood that the old con man in her awoke as well."
Jones discusses an interesting experience of Father Jack Spalding who made two trips to Medj. and formed an adult Medj. prayer group at St. Maria Goretti Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. Jones writes:
Soon another lady from the adult prayer group, Annie, came to Father Spalding and announced that she too was getting messages from the Blessed Virgin, and soon St. Maria Goretti Parish in Scottsdale, Arizona, was attracting pilgrims of its own. In each instance, the spiritual entity was telling the seers to follow their impulses. At least that is what whatever it was ended up saying to Father Spalding, because before long he too was getting messages.
It seems that in November of 1988 Father Spalding was saying Mass in Scottsdale one Thursday evening. He remembers standing in front of the altar ready to give his homily when all of a sudden everything went blank.
"I didn't not only not remember what I was going to say in the homily," he recounted later, "but I didn't even remember what the gospel was."
Father "just stood there," wondering "what in the world is happening to me," when all of a sudden "this feeling came over me like I was being drained. And all of a sudden I heard myself speaking and it wasn't me speaking. It lasted about 45 seconds and it was over. And I don't even remember hearing what it was. But I just remember when it was over I was so tired that I could hardly make it back to where I was sitting."
This experience needed explication from someone who was used to playing in the spiritual equivalent of the big leagues, and so after he finished saying Mass, Father Spalding decided to consult Gianna [Bianchi, another seer]. After making it to the sacristy, Spalding asked Gianna, "Do you have any idea of what happened to me tonight?" and she said, "Yes I do."
"Well," Gianna told Spalding, "Our Lady told me that She doesn't want her children to have to wait for a week to hear what she has to say to them. If you will say, yes, she will use you like this every now and then." And so Father Spalding has been used ever since.
