October 2004
Final Word
THE EDITOR
In centuries to come, when the history of our tumultuous times is forensically examined by legions of 'born again' Catholic traditionalists, clerical and lay, the proliferation of fraudulent seers and false apparitions will demand almost as much attention as the insidious postconciliar trilogy we have examined in recent issues - the New Mass, the New Theology and the New Philosophy.
Tomes will be written about the way in which the spiritual void effected by faithless hierarchies created a mass market for signs and wonders, leaving shepherdless Catholics prey to the hypnotic influence of self-deluded prophets and/or criminal opportunists.
The sheer magnitude of the Medjugorje scam will ensure its pride of place in any such historical reckoning. Charismatically allied with the so-called New Movements, Medjugorje has spread like a virus within the Church, corroding episcopal authority, undermining approved apparitions, fracturing the Marian movement, dividing families, ruining lives, corrupting faith, weakening resistance to Modernism and the Modernist wreckers. Barely a week passes without news of yet one more otherwise sensible Catholic priest or layman being sucked into the unholy Medj vortex.
With the help of pioneering critiques and investigations by the likes of Michael Jones and Michael Davies, and even one excellent appraisal from the French epsicopate, CO has periodically recorded the truth about Medjugorje. However, the ensuing talk given by the Bishop of Mostar early this year is surely the final authoritative word on the matter.
A masterful exposition of events by the prelate at the heart of the affair, it is a summary record par excellence of the facts pertaining to this monumentally damaging fraud. It is offered, together with Father Peter Joseph's excellent treatise on the discernment of spirits, as ammunition in the ongoing battle for souls caught up in 'apparitionitis' and the Medj merry-go-round.