Medjegorje

[the_rev]

I got this in an email from a Medjegorje prayer group I belong. Here is the context:


"Oct. 17,1985"

" Dear children, everything has its time. Today I call you to start working
on your hearts. Now that all the work in the fields is over, you are
finding time for cleaning even the most neglected areas, but you leave your
heart aside. Work more and clean with love every part of your heart. Thank
you for having responded to my call."

(Jan Connell questions to visionaries )

Q .Ivanka, young mothers often have jobs that take them away from ther
babies and young children for many hours. Sometimes these mothers feel
guilty.

A. they should never feel guilty. If mothers pray, they will experience in
their hearts what the answer for them is. If they work and feel peace in
their hearts, then they know they are within God's will. If they experience
no peace, then they must pray to find God's will for them selves and their
children.

Q. Most of us never think of God our Father as our servant, Vicka.

A. And the Blessed Mother is so good. Hardley anyone realizes anymore that
God is serving His children all the time. Many of us never even say thank
you. And the Blessed Mother is sad because often God's children won't serve
each other as He serves us.

Ivan says : " These apparitions have made a big difference in my life - the
difference between heaven and earth. For example, the way I now live, I
arrange my schedule so that even during the day I find time for prayer.
Before there was no meaning in my life. Now I'm completely filled with
contentment. "

St. Edith Stein :

" God is there in these moments of rest and can give us in a single instant
exactly what we need. Then the rest of the day can take its course, under
the same effort and strain, perhaps, but in peace. And when night comes,
and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been,
and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have
to be embarrassed and ashamed ; just take everything exactly as it is, put
it in God's hands and leave it with him. Then you will be able to rest in
him - really rest - and start the next day as a new life. "


Just thought I'd share it with you!

[friarMatt]

Thanks....i loved my trip to Medj...i so hope to go back someday! Mary has always been so good to me!!!

fr. Matt

[the_rev]

There are many places I want to go.

I want to go to Fatima and Lourdes and Guadulupe

I want to go to Columbia where I sponsor a kid through [url="http://www.cfcausa.org"]http://www.cfcausa.org[/url]

And I want to go to Medjegore because it is still occuring. I jsut have to raise the funds!

Any ideas?

[popestpiusx]

Hey folks, Medjugorje is not approved by the Church. The following statement was made by the Bishop of Moistar-Duvno (within which Medjugorje falls):

Neither the Diocesan Bishop as the head of the local diocese of Mostar-Duvno, nor any other competent authority has ever officially declared the parish church of St. James the Apostle in Medjugorje as a "Marian shrine" and no "cult" of the Madonna based upon so-called apparitions has ever been proclaimed. Due to these discrepancies, the local Bishop has repeatedly forbidden anyone from preaching or speaking in churches on the supernatural nature of these so-called "apparitions and revelations", and he has asked that no official pilgrimages be organized, be they at the level of parishes, dioceses or generally in the name of the Church. These and similar warnings were made by our former Bishops' Conference and the Holy see. Whoever acts to the contrary, is directly going against the official statements of the Church, which even after 14 years of so-called apparitions and widespread propaganda, still remains valid in the Church.

[the_rev]

All these apparations from Lourdes, Fatima, etc. have one thing in common, Mary has asked to pray for the conversion of sinners and unbelievers.

Maybe I won't go to medjegorje then! Cross that of my list!!!!

God Bless,

REV

[friarMatt]

i believe the CDF has decided they will be the competant authority and removed it from the Bishop of Mostar...

[url="http://www.aracnet.com/~cfpw/what_does_the_church_say_about_medjugorje_.html"]Some Church sources on Medj.[/url]

Once again, look at the fruits of Medj. numerious conversion, reconcilliation between people and God, many priestly and religious vocations...i am open to being wrong for going there, but after my trip I fell more in love with the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother and fasting...i am leaving final approval up to Holy Mother Church

fr. Matt

[the_rev]

FriarMatt, I truly agree with all you said!

Your a role model!

[popestpiusx]

Friar Matt, that site has some wonderful ambiguous one-liners but no evidence of anything other than that.

Would you support attending an SSPX church? Those people have great love for "the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother and fasting". Apparent good fruits do not make a thing itself good. God can make use of evil to bring about good. I have no doubt that the sincerity of so many of the "pilgrims" has much to do with the good fruits as well.

Consider this as to the legitimacy of pilgrimages:

SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
Vatican City, March 23, 1996, Prot. No. 154/81-01985
Your Excellency,
In your letter of February 14, 1996 you inquired what is the present position of the Church regarding the alleged "apparitions in Medjugorje" and whether it is permitted to the Catholic faith to go there for pilgrimage.
In reference to that it is my honour to make known to you that, regarding the authenticity of the apparitions in question, the Bishops of the former Yugoslavia confirmed in their Declaration of April 10, 1991 published in Zadar:

“On the basis of investigation up till now it cannot be established that one is dealing with supernatural apparitions and revelations. However, the numerous gatherings of the faithful from different parts of the world, who are coming to Medjugorje prompted both by motives of belief and certain other motives, require the attention and pastoral care in the first place of the bishop of the diocese and of the other bishops with him so that in Medjugorje and everything related to it a healthy devotion toward the Blessed Virgin Mary would be promoted in conformity with the teaching of the Church.. For that purpose the bishops shall issue separate appropriate liturgical-pastoral directives. Likewise by means of their Commission they shall further follow and investigate the total event in Medjugorje.”

The result from this in what is precisely said is that official pilgrimages to Medjugorje, understood as a place of authentic Marian apparitions, are not permitted to be organized either on the parish or on the diocesan level, because that would be in contradiction to what the Bishops of former Yugoslavia affirmed in their aforementioned Declaration.

Kindly accept, your Excellency, an expression of my profoundly devoted affection!
+ Tarcisio Bertone

[popestpiusx]

Also the foloowing was stated in an interview with Bishop Peric, Bishop of Mostar by Yves Chiron:

YC Certain authors claim that the enquiry into the events at Medjugorje has been withdrawn from the competent authority - your own, in your capacity as Bishop of Mostar - and that it has been reserved to the Holy See. Is this correct? Is one of the commissions of enquiry continuing a work of investigation and study?

Bp I would be very happy if the Holy See would reserve to itself the enquiry on the events at Medjugorje, forming its own commission and arriving at a definitive judgement. It certainly has the authority to do so. But, right up till today, I have received no such request. In 1993 the Episcopal Conference of Yugoslavia was dissolved, and was replaced by a number of episcopal conferences of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina etc. The Commission of Enquiry into the events at Medjugorje of the Episcopal Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina (which is comprised of four bishops) has the authority to form a new commission eventually. I endeavour to visit the parish of Medjugorje on a regular basis. There are many disorders there. There are Franciscan priests there with no canonical mission; religious communities have been established without the permission of the diocesan bishop, ecclesiastical buildings have been erected without ecclesiastical approval, parishes are encouraged to organize official pilgrimages, etc. Medjugorje, considered as a location of presumed apparitions, does not promote peace and unity but creates confusion and division, and not simply in its own diocese. I stated this in October 1994 at the Synod of Bishops and in the presence of the Holy Father, and I repeat it today with the same responsibility.

[popestpiusx]

From the Catholic Herald:

It was the belief of the late Bishop Zanic that the whole thing began as a joke, and at first that’s how it appears. The children would laugh hysterically during the Gospa’s early appearances, not least when Jakov Colo asked if his football team, Dynamo Zagreb, would win the championship. After an initial week of visions, the children said the Gospa would appear for "just three more days", that the visions would end by 4 July 1981. But since then she has spoken on an additional 30,000 occasions, has given the seers 10 secrets each, promised great signs from heaven that never materialised and, contrary to the teachings of the Church over two millennia,ï has declared "all religions are equal before God". She became the number one apologist for a group of disobedient Herzegovinian Franciscans only when Fr Jozo Zovko, the parish priest at St James Church, Medjugorje, where the apparitions were said to be appearing, established himself as the children’s "spiritual adviser". But even then she would continue to drop the occasional gaffe, describing, for instance, The Poem of the Man God, a book by Maria Valltorta, as "good reading" (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Prefect of the CDF, had said it was a "heap of pseudo-religiosity").

What really swayed the local bishops against the Gospa, however, was her partisan approach to "the Herzegovina question". This is the Vatican’s term for a de facto schism involving a large minority of Herzegovinian Franciscan friars who not only refuse to obey their bishop but also defy the Father General of their Order and Rome itself.
In the 1980s two such friars, Frs Ivica Vego and Ivan Prusina, were expelled from their Order for disobedience by a Vatican tribunal, acting on the advice of Bishop Zanic and the Franciscan Father General in Rome, but they continued to celebrate the sacraments. Thirteen times the Gospa told the seer, Vicka Ivankovic, that the bishop was wrong and her "saints" were innocent, even threatening him with God’s "justice" unless he reversed their expulsion (Fr Vego, for the record, soon showed just how saintly he was by impregnating a Franciscan nun).
When Bishop Zanic later investigated the apparitions, he should have had the co-operation of the Franciscans. Instead, they publicly slandered him, calling him a "wolf", "Satan" and a "hypocrite". It was hardly a surprise, then, that Bishop Zanic soon concluded that the six children were lying, and publicly accused Fr Zovko and his sidekick, Fr Tomislav Vlasic, of putting words into the mouth of Our Lady. Indeed, he was not only concerned about the spiritual well-being of his people but also about their corporal welfare. In 1985 he wrote to Fr René Laurentin, a chief promoter of the visions, complaining that "a fierce frenzy has taken hold of many of the faithful who were good until now; they have become excessive and peculiar penitents . . . one can look forward to a religious war here"...

[immaculata]

Thanks for the info, popestpiusx... I've always had my suspicions about Medjugorie...

[url="http://www.plannedparenthood.org"]Planned Parenthood[/url] and [url="http://www.naral.org"]NARAL[/url] are [url="http://www.plannedparenthood.org"]pure evil.[/url]

[popestpiusx]

I agree, but just out of curiosity, what does that have to do with Medjugorje?

[immaculata]

[quote name='popestpiusx' date='Apr 5 2004, 12:25 PM'] I agree, but just out of curiosity, what does that have to do with Medjugorje? [/quote]
It's a Google Bomb.. see XIX's signature.

[popestpiusx]

oh. I don't know what a goggle bomb is.
But...
I still agree.
And, Medjugorje is bad news. Very bad.

[popestpiusx]

Another little tidbit:

The ‘seers’ were said to be in ‘ecstasy’ during the apparitions – a state in which they were oblivious to sensation and the events around them. On January 14, 1985, while the ‘seers’ were allegedly in this state, Frenchman Jean-Louis Martin approached Vicka "and made as if he were going to poke her in the eyes with his two fingers. Vicka jumped back instinctively and was quickly led out of the room by Fr. Vego. A little while later she returned and explained that while she had been watching the Blessed Virgin, the infant Jesus looked as if He were slipping out of her arms. The reaction that Martin saw as her avoiding being pocked in the eye was in reality her attempt to catch falling Baby Jesus, at least according to Vicka’s explanation" ("Untold Story II," p. 24). The incident was filmed on camera – and two weeks later, the priests closed the apparitions to the outside public.