Medjugorje and Depression (priests, ritual, testimonies, virgin, contradiction)

[Maryanne]

To anyone is depressed, unsure of their life, don't know the meaning of their life etc.... I recommend reading the messages of Medjugorje. It has helped me rediscover my life and my purpose of being here, and most of all it has thrown out all doubts about the existence of God.
Go to: www.medjugorje.org/medpage.htm and click on the "The messages from 1981-2004" icon.
I recommend the messages of January 25 - 1988, March 18 - 2003 and January 25 - 1997.
And if you don't believe in the Medjugorje apparitions, it is still worth reading the messages.

To those people who discredit Medjugorje, there are 2 sides to every story:

Over 1,900,000 people have taken communion (more than at Fatima)

200,000 Holy Communions have been given in 1 month alone.

27 millions pilgrims, 50,000 priests and over 100 bishops have come to Medjugorje.

During the Bosnian war, which went on for over 4 years, cluster bombs were dropped all over Medjugorje yet not one bomb went off. This made news headlines and Pope John Paul II called it a miracle of God. During a meeting with the Superior General of the Franciscan Order, the Holy Father asked: "All around Medjugorje bombs have been falling, and yet Medjugorje itself was never damaged. Is this not perhaps a miracle of God?"

The youngest of the visionaries, Jakov Colo, was abandoned by his father and then orphaned of his mother in the early days of the apparitions when he was ten years old. His wordless testimony to the apparitions was very powerful at the time, his face in ecstasy being something that could not have been conceivably have been faked.

(Pope John Paul II to a group of Italian physicians on August 1, 1989, reported by Bishop Paul Hnilinca S.J. Aux.Bishop of Rome) spoke the following: "Today's world has lost its sense of the supernatural, but many are searching for and find it in Medjugorje through prayer, penance, fasting."

Cardinal Ratzinger has said: "We shall not supress anything that bears fruit. We cannot yet recognize the supernatural character of these apparitions, but neither can we deny them."

In the early days, Bishop Zanic of Mostar and his successor, Bishop Ratko refused to accept the apparitions. The church never confirmed this position, since the responsibility to investigate the apparitions was removed from Bishop Zanic's Commission in 1986 and given to the Yugoslav hierarchy, which now no longer exists as a result of the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Specialists in psychotherapy, medicine and theology, who have had frequent access to the visionaries testify that they are perfectly normal and balanced, their investigations ruling out alternative explanations such as play-acting, make-believe, auto-suggestion, dreams, hypnosis, catalepsy, hallucination, hysteria, or manipulation of clergy. (the results of the most recent tests were made available in April and December 1998, and are reported in the St James Parish Bulletin of June 2000)

Experiments were conducted on the children in the early days, for instance pressure on Vicka's arm, or lifting up the smaller Jakov, have not evoked the slightest reaction, not even a change of expression. Jakov's knees bent again in prayer when he was released.

The members of the Church who do believe in Medjugorje are ridiculed as superstitious and gullible. The Virgin Mary, in 1973 to Sister Agnes, warned this would come to pass: "The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres."

The most intellectually brilliant and imaginative theologian could not have composed these hundreds of messages touching so many aspects of life, and sustained this over a period of two decades, preserving the same verbal style, relevance, pithiness, affectivity and beauty.

Medjugorje, by all accounts, has already produced spiritual fruits in great abundance with letters, oral testimonies, medical certificates attesting to miraculous healings, unexpected conversions and renewed faith.

More confessors are heard in Medjugorje than in any other parish in the world with more than 150 confessors working without interruption every day.

Sorry this is so long!!
_________________
God loves the sinner, but not the sin.
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[Lightkeeper]

I read a good book, "Looking For Mary," by Beverly Donofrio. Beverly traveled to Medjugorje in search of Mary and came back with a new life. This book led me to writing a thesis on the feminine aspect of the Divine for my degree in comparative religion.

[Scott1]

BAN ON MEDJUGORJE TOURS

Press reports of letters from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to bishops regarding Medjugorje have suggested that the ban in place against official pilgrimages to the site of the alleged apparitions extends to private persons and groups. In one publicized letter, to a French bishop, the Congregation's Secretary, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, quoted the 1991 statement of the former Yugoslavia's bishops' conference which said that "it cannot be confirmed that supernatural apparitions or revelations are occurring here" (in Medjugorje). Archbishop Bertone also repeated the bishops' acknowledgement that the number of Catholics traveling to the site requires the Church to arrange for their pastoral care. He then wrote, "From what was said, it follows that official pilgrimages to Medjugorje, understood as a place of authentic Marian apparitions, should not be organized either on a parish or diocesan level because it would be in contradiction with what the bishops of the ex-Yugoslavia said in their declaration cited above."
Speaking on Aug. 21st 1996 in Rome Vatican Press Office spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, sought to clarify the status of pilgrimages to Medjugorje. He noted,

"You cannot say people cannot go there until it has been proven false. This has not been said, so anyone can go if they want ... When one reads what Archbishop Bertone wrote, one could get the impression that from now on everything is forbidden, no possibility" for Catholics to travel to Medjugorje. But, in fact, "nothing has changed, nothing new has been said ... The problem is if you systematically organize pilgrimages, organize them with the bishop and the church, you are giving a canonical sanction to the facts of Medjugorje ... This is different from people going in a group who bring a priest with them in order to go to confession ... I was worried that what Archbishop Bertone said could be interpreted in too restricted a way. Has the church or the Vatican said no (to Catholics visiting Medjugorje)? NO. ... The difference, in the terms of canon law, is that an official pilgrimage, organized by the diocese with the bishop, is a way of giving a juridical sanction to the facts; you are saying this is true."

While this statement does not address the prudence of going to Medjugorje as a place of alleged apparition, which rests on its credibility according to the norms of reason, it does lay to rest the question of whether it is disobedient in the mind of the Church to do so.

Just in case you didn't know....... :mrgreen:

Peace,
Scott

[Maryanne]

Pope John Paul II on Medjugorje :

www.calltochrist.com/virginmary/article3.html :angel:

[Maryanne]

These are other good links to Medjugorje:
Photos and Facts on Medjugorje

Mary Our Mother

[Maryanne]

Photos and Facts on Medjugorje
http://www.apparitionsmedjugorje.ifr...gorje/pics.htm

Mary Our Mother
:love:
www.freewebs.com/mother/medjugorje.htm

[FFH]

Another extremely noteworthy thread...

[hannahrose1209]

I liked the messages!! They were really good!! Thank you for sharing!