considerations of medjugorje

The Critics

Three of the most prominent critics of the Medjugorje phenomena to emerge in the first ten years of the events were Bishop Pavao Zanic. Franciscan Father Ivo Sivric and the Canadian academic Louis Belanger.
The bona fides of the three are not known to me in any depth but each of them produced important source material which I consider vital to any assessment of the supposed visions.


Bishop Zanic declared his rejection of the visions decisively in 1984 in a public letter under the title La Posizione Atuale.
He asserted that the visions had been orchestrated by the Charismatic Movement.
He accused Father Tomislav Vlasic of being a Charismatic Wizard.
He insisted various of the supposed visionaries had lied to him and that their visions often consisted of mere play acting.
There are some gaps in his reasoning and some of his assertions of fact vary over time and may not be rigorously correct.
He is also not always entirely fair in  my view viz purported visionaries whom he accuses of outright lying.
Nor do I think he was entirely fair with regard to his role in dismissing two Franciscan friars from Ministry.
The Bishop for a long time seemed to maintain that any notion emanating from the visionaries which implied or stated that the Bishop was wrong about something, amounted to a proof that the Blessed Virgin couldn't say such a thing. His assessment that a true apparition of the Virgin could not criticise him as a legitimate Church authority, is by no means a game winner as analysis.
His statement that the visionary Mirjana's watch had been deliberately altered to facilitate a claim that the watch spun crazily during an apparition would later be expressed as an assertion that Mirjana might have dropped her watch. Well, which was it?
No critic is perfect.
All of the ones I've mentioned may have flaws.
Some of their conclusions are not exhaustive, ie not as conclusive as they assert.
If it were not so, Medjugorje would have been an open and shut case.
I recommend the Bishop's 1984 letter and a similar pamphlet style letter which he published in 1990 as being essential studies for the student of these events.

Father Ivo Sivric wrote the book The Hidden Side Of Medjugorje which contains a marvellous overview of the events.
The book also includes English language transcripts of interviews with the visionaries during the first seven days of the appparitions.
These are gold dust.
Father Sivric gives excellent historical and cultural commentary along with his analysis of the nature of the visions.
He postulates that the apparitions are a pious fraud, initiated possibly with good intentions. which then took on a life and momentum which has proved unstoppable.
Father Sivric asserts some things that may not pass muster as assertions.
He says that the visionaries if they were really visionaries would live an exemplary life.
He notes that that he has been told there are people in the town whom some of the visionaries refuse to greet.
I would opine that there is no consistent evidence anywhere that God only chooses exemplary people for his purpose. In any case the notion that the visionaries aren't exemplary because unidentified persons say they don't greet them civilly, is tenuous in the extreme.
The Hidden Side Of Medjugorje was published in English in 1989. It is a refreshing bracingly sceptical read. There may be errors and omissions in it but I would say it is still in its way the best writing we have about Medjugorje. My main regret is that our third major source Louis Belanger edited the book. I would have preferred if himself and Fr Sivric had arrived at their conclusions without a collaboration.

Louis Belanger is the third major critical source regarding the first decade of apparitions at Medjugorje on the strength of video footage which he shot on 14 January 1985.
The footage has since featured in an Arthur C Clarke television documentary and is still much viewed on the internet.
The footage shows an onlooker jabbing his  finger being towards the visionary Vicka's eye.
Me Belanger asserts that if a visonary reacts to external stimuli then the vision is not genuine.
Vicka appears to react slightly. According to Mr Belanger he only saw her reaction when he replayed the tape.
He then filmed a man telling Vicka that people no longer believed in her visions because her movement showed she was not unaware of her surroundings.
Vicka is said to have replied (in Croatian) that she moved because she thought the Blessed Virgin was about to drop the baby Jesus.
Mr Belanger contends that this sequence of events demonstrates Vicka was not having a genuine vision.
I would demur.
There is no agreed scientific standard that asserts visions are not taking place if a supposed visionary reacts to surroundings.
In many cases of purported visions, those supposedly experiencing the vision appear to retain an awareness of their surroundings, sometimes during the vision, sometimes during parts of it.
The finger jab test cited by Mr Belanger and instigated by an (independent?) onlooker, proves nothing.
There is also a moral quibble with what was done and the circumstances in which it was done.
Saint Bernadette at Lourdes was apparently on occasion aware of her surroundings during her supposed visions and at other times not. The present day fineger jabbing investigators at Medjugorje might have blinded Vicka and proved nothing. Here I would add that at Lourdes in 1858 on a particular occasion substantial witness reports claim Bernadette's hand slipped into a candle flame for fifteen minutes and yet at the end of the vision was unburnt.
Such a testimony from Lourdes in 1858 does not for most of us justify risking blinding purported visionaries or even setting them on fire while claiming to have only by chance filmed such unethical experiments and further claiming the procedure and its follow up was all instigated by an unidentified onlooker.
Mr Belanger says he did not know the onlooker at Medjugorje (still never properly identified) was going to jab his finger into Vicka's eye. Mr Belanger also states that he did not realise he was filming Vicka when the proposition was put to her that people no longer believed she was having visions because she had flinched.
I don't believe him.
Vicka's answer does not disprove the visions either though it's not impressive. It might demonstrate that on this occasion she was a bit of a slob when put on the spot. For me, the whole exercise reflects rather more negatively on the methodology of Mr Belanger rather than on Vicka.
Mr Belanger's footage remains unique and important and unsurpassed.