Medjugorje: Great article to share with Roman Catholics

[Maria]

I think Arch. Nilos is referring to Abbot Réné-Francois Guettée who wrote The Papacy:

http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/guettee_thepapacy.pdf

[Archimandrit Nilos]

Yes, indeed.

[StephenS]

A book that has much to offer and I would highly commend.

[Justin Kolodziej]

It is suspicious that "Mary" is appearing by herself when all traditional icons of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, include the infant Christ. At least I don't know of any that don't.

[Maria]

It is suspicious that "Mary" is appearing by herself when all traditional icons of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, include the infant Christ. At least I don't know of any that don't.

What is even more suspicious has been pointed out by the late British Roman Catholic author Michael Davies!

Michael Davies noted that at Medjugorje, the apparition was clothed in ghostly shades of gray when all other appearances of the BVM were clothed in blue and white robes. In Holy Orthodoxy, the Most Holy Theotokos most always wears blue and red symbolizing her queenly status (blue) and maternity (red).

[Barbara]

The ghostly gray garments seem to have not been remarked by many people. That by itself is a bad sign about
the general discernment of Catholics today.
There should have been many exposes written by learned scholarly Priests. But where ARE those ? I haven't seen any by
major figures in the Catholic Church. Only sedevacantists unanimously reject Medjugorje. But these critics are not considered
academically stellar the way a Bishop Fulton Sheen of the past would have had credibility if he had come out firmly against
this purported apparition site. Or Fr. Coughlin, very popular in the 1930s, but forced into silence by Roosevelt, sadly in conjunction with the otherwise strong Pius XII. This Irish-American priest was outspoken and fearless in his analyses of political and economic problems facing America.
[I just went to wikipedia to check the spelling and see that the account of his ideas there is amazingly biased. Wikipedia is not
so great sometimes.]
Anyway, had Fr Coughlin scathingly exposed the Medjugorje Hoax on his radio program, the American pilgrimage market there would have dried up overnight.

[Barbara]

Aha, I did find a great expose written in 1998. Somehow, mysteriously, it never got to the mass market, or
even the Catholic readership market !

This author started out by talking about the massacres of the Serbs in the 40s only a short distance away from the "hill of apparitions". When Maria mentioned Michael Davies' work, I meant to check that out. But instead I found a very complete book by another Michael. I just started it but it's really right on target ! I am going to check out his other works too, which range from commentaries on [lack of] culture today to why the genre of the horror movie came about.

I had not heard of this aspect of the Medjugorje Fraud : the dangerous Franciscans who caused so much trouble in that vicinity from WW2 onwards. It has been they who promoted this fake, in order to make money.

Apparently, when there was civil war raging during the early 1990s, the pilgrimage market dried up entirely.
Instead, a bunch of new fake visionaries were trotted out by the promoters of Medjugorje, a number of whom were actual mafia and other shady characters !

Even though wildly improbable, the new crop of visionaries, such as a Teresa Lopez in Colorado, was used to milk those funds which had been heading to Medjugorje until such time as the area was deemed safe for foreigners to visit, around 1995. And to keep the attention from wandering of the large number of American dupes who had been easily sold into belief in Medjugorje.

The plot thickens : from one wrong apparition came a handful ! Truly, few Catholics are taught anything about discernment these days. The evidence shows in the abject gullibility re obviously phony apparitions.

Stay tuned for more as I go along through the book !

PS - Thanks for the information that Michael Davies has died. I hadn't heard that. He was a prolific Catholic writer during the
1990s.