Still Running Off at the Keyboard

THE MEDJUGORJE DECEPTION

It's interesting to consider the political and social situation existing at the time the apparitions began on June 27, 1981. E. Michael Jones describes it as follows in his book.

John Paul II had visited Poland, setting off the Solidarity movement focused on the Black Madonna, which was undermining the communist hold on the country. In the Diocese of Mostar, some parishes had been run by Franciscans due to a lack of Diocesan priests. That lack had turned around, and the Bishop had sought to place diocesan priests in the parishes run by the Franciscans. The Franciscans resisted this move and refused to vacate the parishes, in direct defiance not only of the Bishop but also of their Superior General.

Fr. Zovko has been holding charismatic meetings that included mind altering encounter techniques. The two seers of the early visions, however, were not among the group of young people who attended these meetings.

The seers, often referred to as "children" were in fact teenagers. Both had come from dysfunctional families. Mirjana was considered to be a "Pankerica" or punk rocker. A term which apparently meant that she wore jeans and T-shirts instead of dresses, a style of dress that was considered very liberal. Some believed that she was immoral and used drugs.

The "children" gave out the story that they had been out tending sheep until the Bishop reminded them it was a sin to lie, at which point they admitted that they had gone up apparition hill to smoke. What they smoked is not known for sure. There is some thought that it may have been marijuana.

The area in which the apparitions took place is Bogomil territory. The heresy had never been completely stamped out. Jones writes:

In a conversation with a group of tour guides, Mirjana once related a vision in which the Virgin who appeared was then chased away by another Virgin, who announced then, "You see, even the devil can appear like me." The vision, which the tour guides are convinced was genuine, has a certain resonance with the religion of the Bogomils, which infested the area before the subsequent rise of Islam. Bogomilism was an essentially Gnostic heresy, which posited a rough equality of power between God and the devil. The region has been infected with it ever since. Even Yugoslav Communists like Milovan Djilas were, in a sense, Bogomil Marxists. (p. 83)

When the visions first began, Fr. Ivo Sivric suspected his second cousin Marinko Ivankovic was the orchestrator. At one point Ivanka said that "Marinko writes up everything. I memorize that, then I read." Mirjana said that "Marinko says that we should tell the people as if the Gospa had said that people shouldn't come anymore, that the Gospa will not come anymore."

A rivalry developed between Marinko and Fr. Zovko when Fr. Zovko wanted the Gospa to start appearing in the church.

Shortly before the apparitions began, Fr.Vlasic was in Rome attending a charismatic conference and attempting to discern whether he should abandon his vocation and marry the nun who was the mother of his child, or abandon her and remain a priest. During one prayer meeting a prophecy was given "Do not fear, I am sending you my Mother." Fr. Vlasic took this to be a sign that he should remain a priest, and later saw in the apparitions in Medjugorje the fulfillment of that prophecy.

Bishop Zanic, believed that Fr. Vlasic was the instigator of the apparitions.

After the first six days of apparitions the seers announce that the Gospa will appear for only three more days.

Crowds began converging in Medjugorje almost immediately, making the scene begin to appear to have the same potential to overthrow communism that the Solidarity movement in Poland provided, and subsequently making the Vatican reluctant to view the apparitions negatively.

Jones quotes Fr. Sivric's speculation about what happened at the beginning,

that the visionaries themselves might have mounted the whole affair of the apparitions? One day, they might have been at loose ends, looking for something to do to relieve their frustrations. They had neither movies nor a discotheque in the immiediate neighborhood. They then thought of a worthy activity. On their own initiative they might have wanted to try something for the greater glory of God and the spiritual well-being of the people. They might have decided to try to shake the people up spiritually. (p. 82)

Jones evaluates the early days of the apparitions:

But did the seers actually see anything? The two bishops who have handled the case are divided on the issue. Bishop Zanic is convinced that the whole thing was a hoax cooked up by the Franciscans to best him in their battle over the contested parishes. Bishop Peric, the current ordinary, feels that the children may very well be seeing something. The only thing he is sure of is that whatever they are seeing, it is not the Blessed Mother. That leaves, of course, only one other option. [Fr.] Philip Pavich is convinced that the seers are trafficking in spirits. He bases his judgment on years of experience with New Age devotees who come to Medjugorje to him for confession and oftentimes exorcism and then leave their New Age/Occult literature behind. But there is a fourth possibility as well. Judging from the psychological evidence, Marjana may very well be a "medium," i.e., a person who has an unusually sensitive relationship to the fears and hopes and sins and guilts which drive her community. It seems evident that she hears voices. In an interview with Tomislav Vlasic which got suppressed, Mirjana talked about a woman who once heard tapping on her window and then heard the same tappping on a sixth floor window after moving to a new apartment far away. The woman could be Mirjana, who moved from the village to Sarajevo. But what was tapping at her window? The answer, according to the Gospa at least, was "souls in purgatory." They "were doing so because she has forgotten to pray for them and they are demanding her prayers."

What we are talking about here is not demons then but ghosts, the souls from purgatory who still haven't found the final closure of heaven or hell and who come back to remind us, therefore, of some unrighted wrong. ...

At any rate, judging from the transcripts of the tapes, both Zovko and the seers were shocked by the size and vehemence of the crowds. Once this shock settled in and the seers were faced with the possibility of admitting that they had made the whole thing up, they got scared. And in a sense the seers hadn't "made it all up"; the crowds had collaborated in making it up with them. But the fact did not remove them from danger. Indeed, until the government--quite wrongly, it turns out--became convinced that they had nothing to fear from the apparitions and that they were in effect a boon to the economy, a number of people were arrested. So the seers, at first shocked by the reaction of the crowd and then amused and finally fearful, were only too happy to have someone take the whole thing off their hands.

Which is just what Father Zovko did. The so-called apparitions went from being a teenage prank or whatever their mystical origin was to being on their way to becoming a world-wide religious phenomenon when Father Zovko brought them into the church. "Ask the Gospa if she'll appear in the church," Zovko kept insisting throughout his conversations with the children, and finally he got his wish. ...

It happened on Thursday, July 2, 1981, the day on which the Gospa allegedly told the children her last apparition would take place. Toward 1:00 p.m., the place in front of the church was jammed with pilgrims, and the crowd grew larger with each minute. Before Mass began, the seers prayed the rosary, kneeling behind the altar. During the recitation of the rosary, the Virgin appeared in the church above the choir loft and bowed over the crowed (sic). Some people claimed that Father Zovko saw her too.

By the time the sermon came around, the apparitions were firmly in Zovko's hand. The sermon was dedicated to the general theme of conversion with particular emphasis placed on penance, fasting, and prayer. The huge crowd gulped it all down as if they were hearing the word of God for the first time. That word fell on them, according to Ljubic's account, like torrents of rain on a parched earth, and it gave birth in them to a renewed spirit and a renewed heart.

Inspired by the reaction of the crowd, Zovko then took on the manner of a Pentecostal conducting a revival. (p. 85-88)