Seedy Aggression Against Medjugorje Followers

Here is a comment, which appeared on an anti-Medjugorje website, which pretty much sums up the whole problem that Medjugorje believers have with this type of agressive anti-Medjugorje campaigning.

"Personally Diane, I sense that you are one who is promoting division. Thanks to Medjugorje, I and thousands of others are now devout Catholics who practice the sacraments and hold the Eucharist at the center of our devotion. Your blogs and aggressive journalism seek to destroy an effective avenue for many non-Catholics or non-practicing Catholics (unbelievers) to return to the Church. I feel so sorry for you and your continued cynicism that seeks to divide rather than unite. You and other Medjugorje cynics are the only ones speaking of division. Those who have come home to Catholicism through Medjugorje certainly aren't speaking of division but rather of unity with Christ."

There is a harvest underway as the poster rightly points out. The actions of certain groups will only spoil it. This comment was attacked as a pack of wolves on a rabbit. The attack was done in a pack way yet with feigned outward cordiality.

The aggression against Medjugorje is the first cause. It is the root of the division. It is quite evident from all available evidence that it has its roots with the communist government and the local bishops (whatever the machinations are there). It is not Medjugorje believers who started this whole thing. Diane posts elsewhere that she blogs about Medjugorje because of all the antagonism toward the local bishop because he didn't approve the apparition. How convenient. Sorry, but how can anyone not notice what travails the Bishop has endured at the hands of practically everyone, and it's almost as if he has brought it upon himself. Jozo stuck to his beliefs and went to jail for it. Simple. Zanic seemed to vacillate and opened himself up to rumour and the old adage that where there's smoke, there's fire. Pride may have been a factor - that Mary would never reprimand a bishop. If something the Bishop has said or done is pointed out in a negative light by practically everyone in the Vatican, the Yugoslav Bishop's Conference and Mary herself, what is to be done?

Here's what was tried by Medjugorje believers, in an effort to extract direction from the turmoil...

They wrote to Rome. They got a reply. The reply from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was not favourable to the local Bishop stance on Medjugorje. Medjugorje believers had their answer. Since then, it has all been nothing but pre-emptive bluster and harvest-spoiling.

Medjugorje has never been condemned by the Vatican after two investigations and now into a third. There is no decree about speaking against Medjugorje on blogs, but surely one can see that this is a type of disobedience towards the Vatican, who already ordered Bishop Zanic to desists spreading his ideas. We see also that Bishop Peric has undertaken self-imposed silence on the subject of Medjugorje. We see subtle Vatican moves to stop this hooplah affecting a sane approach to Medjugorje with plans to create a separate diocese of Medjugorje, separate and distinct from Mostar. I welcome this.

I would like people like Patrick Madrid and Diane K to please consider taking a leaf from Peric's book, let it go, and let God's harvest continue. This is essentially what the original poster was yearning for, as I am.

Patrick is hosting a discussion on Catholic Answers about Mejjugorje in March. If this goes ahead, I hope he comes prepared. Because, I for one, am not going to stand by and watch even more of God's harvest potentially being ripped from His hands.

Patrick is a good man. A little proud perhaps. He doesn't need to get tangled up in this. He should show restraint. Aggression with a suit, tie and gentle demeanour is a particularly foul type of aggression in my book. This division has gone on long enough. Sometimes, we just have to let go and let God. Prayer is the answer! I, for one, have no issue letting go and letting God. I would love to get together with Patrick, Diane and anyone else and form a prayer group to PRAY for mutual guidance and wisdom and for God's will to be done, but I feel that they need to be moderated, and that is the only reason I keep going. Do we believe in the power of prayer? Do we believe that we should "be still and know that He is God"? Do we trust God? Let's put out beliefs to the test! Surely God knows better than we do. Let's pray!

Patrick Madrid Fails Again

Oh how I hate writing negative things about people I look up to. Patrick, stick to apologetics.

I'm referring to Patrick's latest blog entry here.

Diane M. Korzeniewski has obviously been in his ear again and he falls for it every time. I wish he would shake himself free from her. What does he owe her anyway?

Patrick's blog entry is entitled "DEBUNKING SIX UNTRUTHS PUSHED BY MEDJUGORJE PROMOTERS". There are five so-called "untruths" pushed by known Medjugorje antagonist and conspiracy theorist Louis Bélanger, which I, for one, would not bother pushing if I were promoting Medjugorje.

Here's what I responded on his blog (which probably won't make it through moderation).

Patrick, did you even read what the “untruths” consisted of? I’m actually sure you did, which makes it even more lousy than if you hadn’t.

Do you know who Bélanger is? This is the work of spin doctors who went to work with great haste after the book’s release, thinking to themselves “quick, untruths, how many can we drag up?”. I don’t want to use the word naive with you, but man oh man!

5 years of research swept under the carpet with a list of 5 “untruths” from a known Medjugorje antagonist? I must say I am very surprised and expected a little more from you.

Let’s examine the five “untruths” (where did you get the sixth):

1) “The day the seers met with the Gospa for the first time was the 25th June”.
This is not false. Our Lady first appeared on the 24th, but the children were so frightened that they ran away and never approached her and so never “met with the Gospa”. The 25th was the second apparition when the children did not run away and plucked up the courage to approach her. The loaded word “UNTRUTH” was used for this, which isn’t even a little mistake. It’s absolute truth. This should tell you something about the writer of the rebuttal.

2) “Žanić in the course of 1986 alone went to Rome 14 times”.
Apparently, it was only 7. How do we validate this? Does it matter in the larger scheme of things how many times he went to Rome?? Again, the word “UNTRUTH” was used about this, at best, irrelevant “mistake”.

3) “That Žanić had lost authority in the eyes of his diocesan priests can also be seen by the fact that in August of this year [1987] he decreed a change, a transfer for ten priests, and none of them obeyed this decree from Žanić.”
This so-called “untruth” is merely a semantical issue over the word “decree”. Essentially, what Belanger is saying is “it wasn’t actually a “decree”, so there could be no “disobedience”, even though in one way or another no priest agreed to be transferred!!

4) “Kuharić attacked Žanić in his presentation regarding his positions on the case of the “apparitions”, which offended Žanić, who left the meeting in protest.”
Was Belanger present at the meeting? No, he relied on minutes and look at what he chose for his rebuttal! (Emphasis is mine) “The meeting PROCEEDED with a serene exposition on the part of the Cardinal and the Bishop; and of the 18 bishops present, 13, including Bishop Žanić, participated in the discussion. This is the truth.” I’m sure it is the truth, Mr Belanger, that the meeting PROCEEDED serenely. Most meetings do. But, how did the meeting CONCLUDE?

5) A letter supposedly sent to Kuharić, Franic and Peric by the Secret Police, designed to compromise Zanic in the eyes of the Vatican.
According to Peric, he never received the letter. But Belanger does not confirm whether Kuharić or Franic received the letter. Interesting as they were both part of the Bishops’ Conference for the second investigation. And WHY does Belanger think Peric would have passed the letter onto the Vatican? Tornielli didn’t say that. He simply said that, as per the documented minutes of the meeting, there were plans to compromise Zanic’s standing in the eyes of the Vatican. To this end a letter drafted was sent to UDBA superiors for approval. That seems to be as far as Tornielli goes. Belanger uses the fact that there was no action against Zanic, and in fact, apparent promotion, as a “nya nya..see there wasn’t any such letter”. But, why would the Vatican remove Zanic anyway? For a bad call on Medjugorje? I hardly think so. And was Zanic promoted? No. Belanger tries to paint “filling in at Dubrovnik until a new bishop was appointed” as “promotion”. NO UNTRUTHS HERE!

Come on Patrick.

CORRECTION: The five "untruths" were not drafted by Louis Belanger, rather than by Mgr Ratko Peric himself. Mr Belanger took it upon himself to spread these "untruths" and, in the confusion of he-said/she-said, the originator became confused.

Leading Catholic Apologists Jump on the Anti-Medjugorje Bandwagon

It is rather trying time for the Catholic Church. At a time when Catholics need to be most united, crevasses keep appearing on the landscape, some widening to dangerous degrees. Medjugorje is one such case of a sore that just won't heal, mainly due to the co-ordinated and concerted efforts of those that seek to destroy it. It can be put no other way - destruction of Medjugorje is what they seek.

Recent news of the commencement of the work of the new Medjugorje commission and Benedict's positive statements about Medjugorje have done less than we hoped to silence the clamour coming from those who have made smearing the Medjugorje apparitions their mission. We are in the Easter season and I find the opposition to Medjugorje ironically reminiscent of the Good Friday baying of the Jews for Christ's blood while Pontius Pilate called for reason.

A secular carmelite from Detroit, Diane M. Korzeniewski, not herself an apologist of any note, started the ball rolling after the much publicised statements of Archbishop Allessandro D’Errico were released by the official Medjugorje website medjugorje.hr. This news surely brought peace to many who had been confused by all the conflicting reports, but Diane was up for a little creative challenge. To this point, Diane could be found anywhere Medjugorje was being discussed, leaving comments which seemed to deliberately foresake truth for something embarrasingly far less.

I have personally exposed many of her untruths and unique angles on such things as the letter from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of the CDF which told confused, bullied pilgrims that indeed they could travel to Medjugorje and that they need not consider the "opinions" of the local bishop to be Vatican-held. Somehow, from this stance, she managed to scrape a defence of the local bishop, rather than acknowledge anything against him - not that having anything against the Bishop was the key point here, rather that his condemnations did not need to be heeded.

Another unique angle she adopted was to portray the passing of the Medjugorje dossier from the hands of the local bishop to the Yugoslav Bishops' Conference as a necessity forced by the global nature of the apparitions, using a cherry-picked quote to support this, all the while ignoring the voluminous evidence that contradicts her stance, including damning interview comments by member of the Yugoslav Bishops Conference - Frane Franic, who said, among other things:

"The bishops do not wish to humiliate Monsignor, Zanic," Franic stated, "And
when it was brought to his attention.. that his opposition was unfounded, he
began to cry and shout, and the bishops finally stopped arguing."

More information on this matter can be found here.

She doesn't like it when positive things are said about Medjugorje. So, she puts a little spin to suit her purposes.

So, what was her purpose in attempting to create the illusion that we had all misunderstood the comments of Archbishop Allessandro D’Errico? I think it was to deflect attention from herself as a principle source of much of the "opposing information" Benedict was speaking of, thus allowing her to continue on her anti-Medjugorje crusade.

To this end, the totality of her efforts were to tell the world that D’Errico's statement, which was translated by medjugorje.hr as follows:

He is aware of huge amount of positive and good influence of local priests,
religious, Franciscans, lay people, and therefore, it is very difficult for him
to perceive that there can be so many opposing information about the same
matter.

should actually be read as:

He knows about great deeds which are done in this territory by the priests,
religious, franciscans, lay people. [pause]

[new sentence] On the other side he asks himself how come
there are such opposed information about that phenomenon.

What's the point of this? To show that the second statement doesn't follow the first via the connector "therefore". Huh? Even if you divide the two sentences and omit the "therefore", it still says exactly the same thing. The second statement can still be readily understood as following inexorably from the first. The word "therefore" is not even needed, because the phrase "one the other hand" or "on the other side" does a pretty good job connecting the two statements.

Diane simply didn't like hearing that she's one of those Benedict was speaking of, causing all the surprising opposition. But, her solution was to vainly attempt to change what Benedict actually said, rather than change what she was doing.

Yes folks, there are actually Catholics in our midst as reprehensible as this.

Worse, she appears to have enlisted the support of major Catholic apologist, Patrick Madrid. We all know what type of an influence he has in the global Catholic community. But, we absolutely do not need him to get involved, particularly as, from what I've seen and read from him, he has a very limited knowledge of Medjugorje. He appears to have been handed very select pieces of information, mainly from the website of the Bishop of Mostar which as everybody knows cannot possibly be objective, unbiassed information. Yet, on the basis of this, and what looks like little much else, he has unwisely decided to associate himself with Diane and others like her.

Another well-known Catholic apologist, Robert Sungenis, has also been promoting the anti-Medjugorje cause and writings of E Michael Jones, who wrote a book called "Ghosts of Surmanci" in which he attributes the Medjugorje apparitions to a ghostly personification of the collective guilty conscience of a nation involve in muslim genocide. Conspiracy theory gone haywire in the United States.

Benedict has already expressed his surprise at the opposition of people like Diane M. Korzeniewski. I think patience and prayer is needed all the more as the evil one crouches at our door, invoking us to impatience and unwise judgement and plain old human stupidity. I never thought I'd put Patrick or Robert in that category. Nevertheless, may God's will be done in all things. May nothing happen in regard to Medjugorje that is not in accordance with His perfect and holy will. Amen!