considerations of medjugorje

The Presence Of The Charismatic Movement

Some critics have suggested the Medjugorje was faked by elements of a movement within Christianity, involving significant numbers of Protestants and Catholics, styled the Charismatic Movement.
Certainly the Charismatics themselves have claimed that Sister Briege McKenna in the Summer of 1981 prophesied at a Charismatic Conference in Italy to a priest Fr Tomsislav Vlasic who would shortly be associated with the Medjugorje apparitions, that she could see him sitting on a seat with water flowing from it and people from all over the world sitting around him.
The apparitions are said to have begun weeks later on 24 June 1981.
Father Vlasic is said to have become the visionaries spiritual director in August 1981 within a month of the onset of the claimed visions, a position he held in some measure for three years.
He was eventually laicised from the priesthood in 2011 and there have been many attacks on his reputation which I have not chosen to regard as reasons to decide for or against Medjugorje.
He is currently said to be involved with a UFO cult.
At the same Charismatic conference in Italy in 1981 a Domincian priest called Emil Tardif is said to have prophesied to Fr Vlasic : "Do not worry. I am sending you my mother."
Father Tardif would have been purporting to be speaking a message from Jesus and would not, as has been occasionally claimed, have been presuming to order the Blessed Virgin Mary to go to Medjugorje himself.
Briege McKenna has a reputation and substantial international profile as a healing nun which has lasted forty years.
One of her more controversial claims is to have seen a child with Downs Syndrome cease to have Downs Syndrome after a mass (Catholic celebration of praise and Eucharist) in Mexico.
This claim exists in various of her testimonies but she doesn't always specify the element of her claim that the child had Downs Syndrome.
Some of her Irish contacts would not be people I hold in regard.
Natives of my town of Kilcullen, the surgeon Joe McKenna who has lived and worked most of his adult life in Canada, and his sister Breda, have over the years adopted a public posture portraying themselves as charismatics.
Joe McKenna occasionally offered to put acquaintances of mine in touch with the healing nun. (NB: Sister Briege not his sister Breda.)
The father of the Kilcullen McKennas is described on his tombstone as "Northern Division Commander of the IRA.
For reasons entirely unrelated to their paternity, I would not countenance contact with these McKennas.
If Briege McKenna is related to them or in any way complicit with them in her ministry, I would not consider this a point in her favour.
Her supposed role as prophesying the beginning of the Medjugorje apparitions, would in that case seem without merit and should not be seen as an indicator of genuineness in the subsequent phenomena.