The Medjugorje Apparition is Generating What the Devil Loves Most: Disobedience...
YOU ACT IN DISOBEDIENCE
"Mankind will go about with their heads in clouds, with itching ears, accepting false doctrines from false teachers. Novelty, experimentation, modernism, humanism! Because you sin and lose the light, you now fall prey to these creations of satan. Have you not been warned before from the Seat of Peter? Oh, no! You cast aside the direction of your Holy Father in the Eternal City of Rome! Evil men of the cross, you act in disobedience to your Vicar."
– The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, February 10, 1977
PASTORS HAVE CHOSEN THEIR OWN WAY
"There is great disobedience in the houses of My Son throughout the world, and a great predominance of such in your country. Pastors have chosen their own way. Many are in great disobedience to Our Vicar. Man has been set up as an idol of worship. No man shall be above the Creator, for all man will eventually return to the dust. The soul is eternal; life continues. The word 'death' should be removed as such from your books. There is no death. Your body is but a casing, a temple for your holy spirit. When you desecrate this temple, you desecrate your spirit. You blacken this holy edifice of the Father and as such, without redemption, you must be given to satan."
– The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, August 5, 1974
CHASTISEMENT SORELY DUE FOR DISOBEDIENCE TO VICAR
"Your world, My child and My children, has not progressed back to the Eternal Father. Should you receive now one chastisement so sorely due to you for your disobedience to Our Vicar? Do you as a nation, do you, all nations of the world, deserve the continuance of the struggle of Our Vicar for your salvation, or shall you, through your own actions, force the hand of the Eternal Father upon you by abandoning you to your sin? Your nation, the United States, and all nations of the earth--none shall escape the fires."
– The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, May 30, 1981
Catholic Herald reported on February 11, 2011:
Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. I have been to Lourdes on several occasions, largely drawn by the personality of St Bernadette herself. Being chosen by Our Lady as her messenger did not make Bernadette holy; it was how she lived her life afterwards, especially during the 13 years she spent at the convent in Nevers: often in pain, unable to take part in the regular life of the community because of her ill-health, lonely, isolated and constantly belittled by the mistress of novices, she nevertheless bore her crosses with exemplary patience.
St Bernadette has been on my mind ever since I got sent a YouTube film recently, advertising Medjugorje. J Edgar Hoover once said that the only certainties in life were death and taxes. I would add a third: controversy over Medjugorje. It seems that Catholics today are divided into two camps: you are either “for” Medjugorje or “against”. This, needless to say, has led to much unseemly in-fighting within the Church.
What annoyed me about the YouTube presentation (apart from the muzak and the hushed and reverential voice of the narrator) was its blatant way of referring to the alleged apparition as “Our Lady”, as if this were a foregone conclusion. It isn’t. I was further nettled by statements seeming to show that the late pope, John Paul II, as well as Mother Teresa, both “believed” in it, as if to demonstrate that the apparitions must be true, simply because of the witness of these two holy heavyweights.
I am not an expert on the subject of these alleged apparitions. But I have read enough of St John of the Cross to know what he means by “spiritual gluttony” in my encounters over the years with adherents of the place. One lady told me excitedly of her rosary turning to gold; another had been overwhelmed by watching the sun dance; a third became very angry very quickly when I expressed a little caution in my response to her assertion that Medjugorje only brought forth good fruits.
My own instinct is to think that Our Lady has not appeared thousands of times to the supposed seers, or given them dozens of different “secrets”. Nor do the seers themselves live lives like St Bernadette. Of course, you don’t have to be a saint to see Our Lady, as I said above; but there seems to be nothing humble, holy or hidden about the later lives of the Medjugorje “seers”.
Actually, what I think as a private person, or what the late pope wrote in a private letter to two friends who had sent him literature about Medjugorje, or indeed what the saintly Mother Teresa is said to have said, is neither here nor there; it is what the Church thinks that matters. What the Church thinks about alleged apparitions is left to the local Ordinary to investigate and pronounce.
Four years after the Lourdes apparitions of 1858, and after a lengthy investigation, the local bishop pronounced them authentic. In the case of Medjugorje, both Bishop Zanic of Mostar and his successor, Bishop Peric, fully investigated the phenomenon and decided that nothing supernatural was taking place. So why are bandwagons of pilgrims still going there? The answer probably lies in Understanding Medjugorje: Heavenly Visions or Religious Illusion by Donal Foley, available from Theotokos Books.
Foley has his vociferous detractors, naturally enough, but he has done his homework and reading his book reinforced my own skeptical instincts. In particular, the scandalous behavior he describes of some of the Franciscans closely associated with the place, seems shocking: Fr Slavko Barbaric, who died in 2000 and who I was told by one of the faithful at the time “has been taken by Our Lady straight to heaven”, had actually had his faculties for hearing confession withdrawn by Bishop Peric several months before his death; Fr Zovko, who was refused permission to celebrate Mass in Washington in 2002, had had his faculties also revoked; worst of all, Fr Tomislav Vlasic, deeply involved in the early years of Medjugorje, was laicized and dismissed from the Franciscan order very recently, in July 2009, for various misdemeanors including some against the Sixth Commandment.
Bishop Peric has spoken of other problems, apart from disobedient Franciscans: religious communities established without diocesan permission and ecclesiastical buildings erected without approval. What is going on? A sound Canadian priest once said to me, when I asked him about the “good fruits” of Medjugorje: “The Devil doesn’t mind a few thousand people becoming better Catholics after going there if, as a result, he’s got millions of Catholics being disobedient to the authority of the Church.”
Obedience is the issue. It’s what the Devil (you can’t get away from him – and my thanks to “paulpriest”, who pointed out at length to me after my last blog how very busy Old Nick is behind the scenes today) hates like poison. You can imagine Screwtape rubbing his hands with glee. St Bernadette was once asked what she feared most; her reply was: “Bad Catholics”.
"It is through My voice-boxes throughout the world that We must send this warning of caution to all of Our cardinals and bishops. The Father will not tolerate their entering into secret societies! The discipline and rules set down by My Son and those He chose to write the Book of life and love must be adhered to. We direct, in the name of the Trinity, that you bishops and cardinals of the world must use your full powers as hierarchy to excommunicate and defrock all who seek to dethrone My Son and destroy the Faith!"
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, August 21, 1974
"Pray, My children, for there is a great decision coming upon mankind. I cry bitter tears of remorse and anguish. It is not the wish of Heaven that there be a division in My Son's Church. Pray, My children.
"The way back is very simple. O shepherds of Our flock, return to your teachings. Set aside your false pride, for pride will always come before the fall. It is a simple rule and lesson given to you by your prophets, the founding Fathers of My Son's Church, chosen by Him. Bring back these rules of discipline. Do not set upon the world this heavy cross of division in My Son's Church. Do not experiment. Cast out the heretics. Cast out the secret societies. Cast out from among you those who have given themselves to satan. Cast out with excommunication the heretics."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, September 28, 1976
SOURCE:
The electronic form of this document is copyrighted.
Quotations are permissible as long as this web site is acknowledged with a hyperlink to: https://www.tldm.org
Copyright © These Last Days Ministries, Inc. 1996 - 2020 All rights reserved.