New Era World News

PART ONE OF THIS FIVE PART SERIES on Medjugorje provided an historical overview which documented a clear pattern of disobedience on behalf of the Franciscan community of the Diocese of Mostar. Part One further pointed out that this pattern of disobedience includes the Franciscan clergy most closely associated with the seers; it provided a detailed account of the responses given by Bishops Zanic and Peric as well as the Yugoslavian Bishops’ Conference and the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF), whom the Franciscans also disobeyed.  This disobedience, as demonstrated in Part One, was sanctioned by the “Our Lady of Medjugorje”. Parts Two through Four will present the six seers and the continued pattern of disobedience arising among them as well as other factors contrary to the “criteria” established by the CDF for judging the authenticity of alleged apparitions also presented in Part One  and reiterated below:

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Criteria established by CDF for the Discernment of Apparitions

A) Positive Criteria:

a) Moral certitude, or at least great probability of the existence of the fact, acquired by means of a serious investigation;

b) Particular circumstances relative to the existence and to the nature of the fact, that is to say:

1. Personal qualities of the subject or of the subjects (in particular, psychological equilibrium, honesty and.rectitude of moral life, sincerity and habitual docility towards Ecclesiastical Authority, the capacity to return to a normal regimen of a life of faith, etc.);
2. As regards revelation: true theological and spiritual doctrine and immune from error;
3. Healthy devotion and abundant and constant spiritual fruit (for example, spirit of prayer, conversion, testimonies of charity, etc.).

B) Negative Criteria:

a) Manifest error concerning the fact.
b) Doctrinal errors attributed to God himself, or to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or to some saint in their.manifestations, taking into account however the possibility that the subject might have added, even unconsciously, purely human elements or some error of the natural order to an authentic supernatural revelation (cf. Saint Ignatius, Exercises, no. 336).
c) Evidence of a search for profit or gain strictly connected to the fact.
d) Gravely immoral acts committed by the subject or his or her followers when the fact occurred or in connection with it.
e) Psychological disorder or psychopathic tendencies in the subject, that with certainty influenced on the presumed supernatural fact, or psychosis, collective hysteria or other things of this kind.

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The Seers

At the time of the first apparition in 1981, the Medjugorje seers consisted of one child Jakov Colo (age 10) and five teenagers: Vicka Ivankovic (16), Mirjana Dragicevic (16), Marija Pavlovic (16), Ivan Dragicevic (16) and Ivanka Ivankovic (15).

Ivan Dragicevic 

Ivan is one of the three visionaries who continue to have daily apparitions; this same group of three has been given only nine “secrets” out of a total set of ten. The other three seers have had all ten secrets confided to them. Consequently, according to the Virgin Mary (referred to by the teenagers as the “Gospa”), those who have received all ten no longer receive daily visits and messages. Since Ivan still receives daily messages, he remains in a position to attract attention and to raise money given by those who come to hear his message or those who are willing to pay him to have an apparition in their homes or other gathering places around the world where Our Lady appears to him as scheduled.

Ivan was born May 25, 1965 in Mostar. After finishing elementary school, he attempted one year of secondary school at Čitluk, but failed to pass.  When his prefect asked about this failure, Ivan responded that it was due to the impact of Medjugorje. Since the apparitions did not begin until the summer after the completion of his first year, it is hard to grasp his meaning. Nonetheless, later in the same year, The Gospa indicted to Ivan and the others that she would like them to become priests and religious:

“I would like for you to become priests and religious, but only if you yourselves, would want it. It is up to you to decide” (August 1981).

Just four months later (December 8, 1981) she repeated her desire:

In the fall of the same year,  Ivan presented himself as a seminary candidate for the Franciscan province of Herzegovina. He performed as well at the seminary as he did in the high school, viz., after one year, he was asked to leave:

“He preferred the visions and the prayer meetings over his ordinary scholastic duties and it is no wonder that he finished the school year with a negative grade. He had a retry: he was re-examined twice, in June and September 1982. He didn’t pass, so he was dismissed from the seminary at Visoko.”

After failing to master his studies at another school in Dubrivnik, Ivan finally settled on a diploma in the catering business – something directly related to the apparitions and his future business plans, which were apparently contrary to those of the Queen of Heaven; in fact, none of the seers honored her request to become priests and religious.

Instead of becoming a priest, Ivan dropped out of the seminary, started a hotel/catering business, and married a beauty queen, Miss Massachusetts, Loreen Murphy, who experienced some type of conversion through Medjugorje, which eventually resulted in her marriage to the seer. Today, they live in a luxury villa in the Medjugorje countryside from which they entertain Medjugorje pilgrims. Ivan “resides in both, the village of Medjugorje and the US, equally separating his time at each residence.”  Making money is not a sin, but making it off of alleged apparitions from which a person directly profits might indeed be a sin, a very grievous and deadly sin.

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https://youtu.be/hhp_5LfW0f4

Dragicevic Family Home and Villa

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Recently, Ivan’s  apparitions were proscribed in the United States when on October 21, 2013 at the request of Cardinal Gerhard Muller (current Prefect of the CDF under Pope Francis), Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano (Apostolic Nuncio to the United States) forwarded a letter regarding Medjugorje and Medjugorian seer Ivan Dragicevic, to Msgr. Ron Jenkins, Secretary of the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The nuncio iterated the CDF’s acceptance of the 1991 Yugoslavian Bishop’s Conference ruling (The Zadar Declaration) as normative until the CDF makes its own final determination.

“As you are aware, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is in the process of investigating certain doctrinal and disciplinary aspects of the phenomenon of Medjugorje. For this reason, the Congregation has affirmed that, with regard to the credibility of the “apparitions” in question, all should accept the declaration, dated 10 April 1991 (The Zadar Declaration).”

In this same letter conveyed to the USCCB the nuncio expressed his “wishes to:

“…inform the (US) Bishops that one of the so-called visionaries of Medjogorje [sic], Mr. Ivan Dragicevic, is scheduled to appear at certain parishes around the country, during which time he will make presentations regarding the phenomenon of Medjogorje.”

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“It is anticipated, moreover, that Mr. Dragicevic will be receiving ‘apparitions’ during these scheduled appearances.”

The expectation of Marian visitations at the prompting/scheduling of Ivan Dragicevic is problematic in itself. More problematic is the fact that the entire issue is still undergoing scrutiny by the CDF  in cooperation with Bosnian Bishop’s Conference.  Like his Franciscan mentors, Ivan seems to have a problem with obedience (see Part One).  In 1996 Secretary Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, like the Papal Nuncio, made it clear that the CDF made its own the 1991 Yugoslav Bishop’s pronouncement that stated:

“On the basis of the research that has been done, it is not possible to state that there were apparitions or supernatural revelations….It follows, therefore, that clerics and the faithful are not permitted to participate in meetings, conferences or public celebrations during which the credibility of such ‘apparitions’ are taken for granted.”

et al) would have to preface his engagements with statements such as the following:

“The Virgin Mary might be appearing at Medjugorje and if she appears here tonight, the whole thing might be a fabrication, or a ruse, or due to my own mental incapacity or for a profit motive; these things cannot be discounted nor can anything I say or experience be taken for granted as true; I might be a fraud – we will not know until the Church has finalized her investigation.”

Statements such as the above work to preclude presumptions leading the faithful taking the visions for granted. Nonetheless, like the Franciscan priests who served as his first spiritual mentors, Dragicevic does not seem to think much of Bishop’s statements or those issued by the CDF. He continues to travel back and forth between Bosnia and the U.S. speaking at various churches and experiencing visions almost on demand, in violation of the Yugoslavian Bishop’s (and CDF’s) ban on such “meetings, conferences or public celebrations” wherein the credibility of such ‘apparitions’ is taken for granted and advertised as such by both the seer and his supporters .

On the website advertising a stay in Ivan’s home,  “pilgrims” are told that they will be able to,

“Follow the path up Apparition Hill where the visionaries first encountered Our Lady. Touch and pray before the cross that commemorates the spot where Mary first appeared to the visionaries.” Further, they are told that, “The apparition take place at 6:40 daylight savings time”.

On July 13, 2015, after accompanying them to Podbrdo to pray the rosary, Ivan boosted his business by inviting tour guides to his home to experience an apparition; at 18.40. Our Lady appeared on schedule with a special message for the tour guides. Ivan described the encounter:

“I would like also today with some words to bring you closer to this encounter with Our Lady this evening….The beauty of Her love, of Her gaze… all these years. This evening when Our Lady came… Her gaze… Her eyes… when she looked at us all here… always the feeling of Her joy makes you want to cry when you see it, how can you describe Her voice… Her smile… But believe me, the beauty of Our Lady is very difficult to transmit, through statues, through images, through words. This evening Our Lady came joyful. She greeted us all with her maternal greeting:

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“Praised be Jesus my dear children!”

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“After this, Our Lady continued again to pray for all present – you tour guides present because I recommended you all to Her in a special way: your work with the pilgrims and your mission, and to live the messages of Our Lady… this mission that you all have…. After, Our Lady gave the maternal blessing and blessed all. I recommended all of you, and like I said in a special way I recommended you tour guides and your families, all that you have brought in your hearts.”

The Medjugorje Guides are locals that have devoted their lives and vocation to guiding pilgrims around the history of the area. They have trained, studied and qualified on Church history, Local history, History of the Medjugorje phenomenon, Vatican, languages, interpreting and many topics.”

Events such as these are not only good business promotions, they are also public pronouncements that presume the authenticity of events contrary to clear directives given by the local bishops, the Yugoslavian Bishop’s Conference and the Holy See itself!

Running a Bed and Breakfast or even a hotel/motel that provides meals for guests, is in itself a seemingly safe and legitimate business for a Catholic layman, even a seer.  The problem is not the business per-se, the problem is with the its promotion and with the way that it is run contrary to one of the main “negative criteria” established by the CDF for the evaluation of authenticity:

“Evidence of a search for profit or gain strictly connected to the fact.”

Ivan does not simply run a bed and breakfast; he runs a motel built around the specific business and message of Medjugorje – the “fact“. He appears to be using the supposed apparitions as a tool to garner money- to make a lucrative living for himself and his family.

Anyone can book a trip online to stay at Ivan’s home for a $1000.00 a week, including a chance to talk to and pray with Ivan and his family. Tour guides even promise to “arrange meetings” with the other visionaries at their own homes… “pending their availability.” The Pilgrimage Trip Includes:

• Round-trip airfare
• All airport taxes & fuel surcharges
• 7 nights in the Dragicevic Family Home with private baths and air conditioning
• Breakfast daily and Dinner daily
• Wine with dinners
• Daily Mass
• Catholic Guides
• Transfers by private motor coach
• Spiritual activities
• Prayer and Group Meetings

Related to his Medjugore hotel-motel business, one of the more shocking facts about the whole affair is that it has become “a real money-spinner for the ‘seers”. How many simple Balkan peasants can afford a villa complete with a luxury pool for $800,000 payable in 6 months (May 24 to October 24) as indicated on the Mortgage Note below made out to Ivan Dragicevic?

In September 2009,  a complete dossier containing real estate transactions made in the USA by Ivan Dragičević was made available.

It contains such data as the following: On May 15, 2002 Ivan signed a fourteen year mortgage contract in which he promised to pay $60,678 annually for the full term. He sold this property two years later and acquired a 14,000 square foot home and luxury pool in Peabody, Massachusetts for $800,000, which he paid off in one year.

Ivan has apparently remained consistent in his defiance of the bishops, 

According to Bishop Zanic:

Nonetheless, the bishop endeavored to remove Friars Vego and Prusina from Mostar due to the disorder they were causing and for their disobedience. Vego defended himself, however, by defaulting to Our Lady who had advised him, via the seer Vicka, not to leave Mostar. On January 3, 1982 Our Lady stated to Vicka that:

“Ivica (Vego) is not guilty. If they expel him from the order, he must be courageous […] Let him remain! Ivica is not guilty […] The Bishop does not arrange the situation and therefore he is guilty. And then he will not always be the bishop. I will show the justice in Paradise.”

Our Lady also told the priests not to obey the bishop:

“Do not obey anyone!” (Nemojte slušati nikogo!)”

With these words, according to the “visionary” Vicka,  “Our Lady spoke to the two rebel Franciscans Ivica Vego and Ivan Prusina, inducing them to disobey the local ordinary and the general vicar of their order” (Patrick Madrid).”

To make matters worse, on 21 June 1983 Ivan Dragicevic, wrote a letter to the bishop, which contained a warning from Our Lady given during an apparition. Significantly, Father Ivica Vego was present at this apparition as he often was (He was also present when the Virgin Mary supposedly dropped the baby Jesus, to be examined later below).

Ivan wrote:

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“The bishop is the spiritual father of all the parishes in Hercegovina. For this reason I seek his conversion towards these events. I am sending my second-last warning. If what I seek does not come about, my judgement and the judgement of my Son await the Bishop. This means that he has not found the way to my Son Jesus.”

Finally, on October 30, 1984 “Vego and Prusina were both suspended a divinis and reduced to the lay state (by the Vatican Congregation for Religious) and dismissed from the Order (by the General Curia in Rome).”

GO TO PART 3: “Medjugore Saga Priests & Bishops to Seers & Advocates: Seers Continued”

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New Era World News

UNDERSTANDING THE MEDJUGORJE SAGA is greatly facilitated by beginning with a historical review of the evangelization of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This northwestern Balkan region was evangelized by courageous Franciscan missionaries as early as the fourteenth century and then later by episcopal efforts to establish diocesan clergy; the latter virtually ceased to exist by the 18th century. Thus, when the Holy See established an Apostolic Vicariate for Bosnia in 1735, it assigned Franciscans as Apostolic Vicars (implying thereby that Bosnia was a “mission territory”). Later, in 1878 Herzegovina fell from the grip of the Ottomans and became part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Pope Leo XIIl (1881), seeing that Bosnia was now ruled by a more stable Christian regime, took steps to re-establish dioceses governed by local bishops rather than Franciscan Apostolic Vicars.

The new bishops endeavored to build their dioceses by working with the long-established friars asking some to assist diocesan clergy and to help facilitate the transfer of parishes from Franciscan jurisdiction to Diocesan jurisdiction. Rather than cooperate, many Franciscans recalling the Order’s heroic sacrifices and deep cultural roots in the area, chose to resist, such that by mid 1940 the friars still retained 80% of the 79 parishes in the dioceses of Vrhbosna and Mostar. This conflict reached a boiling point in 1960 when the Franciscans unleashed a torrent of criticism at the bishop and threatened him with violence, which led to Vatican involvement.

1968: “… the Holy See ordered the Franciscans to hand over five parishes to the diocesan clergy. They surrendered only two. In 1975, … a Decree of the Holy See was issued regarding the division of parishes in Hercegovinia. The Franciscans publicly and collectively denounced the decree.”

This resistance continued unabated into the 1970’s when the friars in Herzegovina formed the “Mir i Dobro” association of priests, to arouse popular support for Franciscan autonomy and opposition to diocesan parishes. Once again, the issue grew brawny enough to reach the Holy See.

On June 6, 1975, Pope Paul VI issued a Papal Decree entitled Romanis Pontificibus, which addressed the “Herzegovina Affair” involving the Franciscans of Herzegovina who, despite their vows of obedience, maintained control of local parishes and refused to relinquish them to the local bishops. The decree clearly specified the canonical jurisdictions of both the friars and of the diocesan clergy. Pope Paul VI ordered the Franciscans to transfer more parishes to the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno and to accept the episcopal ministry of the bishop:

The pope explained that:

“It is the bishop’s role, as the ruler and center of unity in the diocesan apostolate, to promote missionary activity, to direct it and to coordinate it but always in such a way that the zeal and spontaneity of those who share in the work may be preserved and fostered. All missionaries, even exempt Religious, are subject to his power in the various works which refer to the exercise of the sacred apostolate” (Ad Gentes)

In the spring of 1976, the friars conducted a survey among themselves after which they forwarded a letter to the Holy Father in which they stated their opposition and refusal to implement the decree, “Romanis Pontificibus“:

“…we fully aware and with full responsibility on behalf of our monastic province which we lead and before God’s people which has been entrusted to the pastoral care of our brothers (disregarding the bishop) in the same monastic province, before Christ’s Church and before You, Holy Father, (we) state that the Decree, “Romanis Pontificibus” evidently contradicts the truth, offends natural justice and directly opposes good souls and has tarnished the reputation of the Church.”

In other words, not only is the bishop, wrong, so too is the pope. Consequently, “we” judge the pope’s directions (in Romanis Pontificibus) to “contradict the truth”, offend natural justice” and “oppose the good of souls”.

“As such we feel bound by our conscience to undertake the stand that we cannot and will not; no we cannot take responsibility for the repercussions which will surely follow if we were to approve, accept or implement the Decree.”

Predictably, Rome responded by imposing sanctions:

1. The Provincial administration was removed
2. The Supreme General of the Order in Rome was given authority to administer the Province
3. There were prohibitions from accepting new recruits to the novitiate

Still, many Friars refused to cooperate; resistance continued; well into the 1980’s Franciscans still held 50% of the parishes in violation of the papal decree. Thus, when in the year prior to the apparitions (1981) Bishop Pavao Žanić decided to found a new parish in the city of Mostar, he entrusted it to the diocesan clergy and reduced the size of the existing Franciscan parish. In response, Friar Ivica Vego (a Franciscan priest who became a close confidant, and spiritual guide of the seers) and Friar Ivan Prusina, like Franciscans before them, opposed the bishop in the canonical exercise of his episcopal ministry as spelled out in the Decree, Romanis Pontificibus.

According to Bishop Zanic:

“In 1981, the parish of Medjugorje was governed by the Franciscans. On 19 December of that year, the above mentioned Father Ivica Vego went to Medjugorje, spoke with the visionaries and consulted the Madonna, through them. And Our Lady, from this moment, in her messages began to defend with resentful words the rebel Franciscans.”

Nonetheless, the bishop endeavored to remove Friars Vego and Prusina from Mostar due to the disorder they were causing and for their disobedience. Vego defended himself, however, by defaulting to Our Lady who had advised him, via the seer Vicka, not to leave Mostar. On January 3, 1982 Our Lady stated to Vicka that:

“Ivica (Vego) is not guilty. If they expel him from the order, he must be courageous […] Let him remain! Ivica is not guilty […] The Bishop does not arrange the situation and therefore he is guilty. And then he will not always be the bishop. I will show the justice in Paradise.”

Then, on 15 April 1982 Our Lady also told the priests not to obey the bishop:

“Do not obey anyone!” (Nemojte slušati nikogo!)”

With these words, according to the “visionary” Vicka,  “Our Lady spoke to the two rebel Franciscans Ivica Vego and Ivan Prusina, inducing them to disobey the local bishop and the general vicar of their order” (Patrick Madrid).”

To make matters worse, on 21 June 1983  another seer, Ivan Dragicevic, wrote a letter to the bishop, which contained a warning from Our Lady given during an apparition. Significantly, Father Ivica Vego was present at this apparition as he often was (He was also present when the Virgin Mary supposedly dropped the baby Jesus, to be examined later below).

Ivan wrote:

“Excellency. These are the thoughts that she (the Virgin Mar) told me: ‘Tell the Bishop that I seek a quick conversion from him towards the happenings in Medjugorje, before it is too late. May he accept these events with plenty of love, understanding and great responsibility. I want him to avoid creating conflicts between priests and to stop publicizing their negative behaviours.'”

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“The bishop is the spiritual father of all the parishes in Hercegovina. For this reason I seek his conversion towards these events. I am sending my second-last warning. If what I seek does not come about, my judgement and the judgement of my Son await the Bishop. This means that he has not found the way to my Son Jesus.”

Finally, on October 30, 1984 “Vego and Prusina were both suspended a divinis and reduced to the lay state (by the Vatican Congregation for Religious) and dismissed from the Order (by the General Curia in Rome).”

Like the cadre of Franciscans before them, they disobeyed the order.  In the bishop’s own words, both Vega and Prushina “continued exercising sacerdotal duties in the area of the new founded cathedral parish” and “tirelessly propagandize the Medjugorje apparitions.” They were encouraged in their disobedience by the Gospa of Medjugorje (as recorded in the diary of Vicka and statements of the visionaries) who continually proclaimed their innocence while also claiming that the bishop was in error. Things changed when Vega’s lover, Sister Leopolda, became pregnant;  subsequently, they both left Medjugorje but continued to live nearby.

By the nineties there were still seven parishes that had not been turned over to the diocese. Again, the Holy See intervened. In order to assure compliance to Romanis Pontificibus, the assistance of the Superior General of the entire Order was requested and obtained. Nonetheless, newly appointed diocesan clergy were refused admittance to their churches by recalcitrant friars. As a result, several contumacious Franciscans were expelled from the Order for disobedience. Nonetheless, like other Friars disciplined over the Medjugore affair, they continued to be disobedient and to exercise priestly ministry even though expelled.

Thus, on December 13 and 14 of 1998, the General of the Order of Friars Minor, Fra Giacomo Bini, and Bishop Peric, the canonical authorities charged with putting the decree Romanis Pontificibus into effect, met in Mostar. They were joined by Fra Tomislav Pervan, Franciscan Provincial of Herzegovina and Archbishop Marcello Zago, Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples, representing the Holy See.

As a result of this meeting, the Bishop of Mostar in conjunction with the Provincial Superior of the OFM issued a joint declaration (December 14, 1998) to the priests and faithful of Mostar-Duvno in which they specified that the decree Romanis Pontificibus would be fully implemented and that disobedience would not be tolerated:

“The Holy See and the (Franciscan) order are well aware of the steps that are being taken. Disobedient Franciscans should know that they are liable to be punished according to canon law and the rules of their order. It is desired that the decree (Romanis Pontificibus) should at long last be implemented for the good of the Church, the diocese, the Franciscan province, and, above all, the faithful.

“We remind the faithful that sacraments received from punished Franciscans are invalid”…(The priests were suspended a divinis).

“It is important that all, both clerics and the faithful, should see the local bishop, who is working with the secular and religious clergy, as the centre and point of reference of diocesan ecclesiastical life.”

Nonetheless, several Franciscans not only refused to cooperate with the bishop, they illicitly conducted the sacrament of confirmation against his wishes both years before, and years after, the the December 14 (1998) meeting.

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Communique of the Bishop’s Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina Concerning Confirmation (May 29, 2001)

“We the bishops of Bosnia-Herzegovina, motivated by our responsibility to maintain unity in the Church and by our pastoral care for the good of souls, having gathered together for a special session in Mostar, wish to communicate to the Catholic faithful and the general public the following: The appearance of a member of a non-Catholic community who recently held the rite of confirmation in three parishes of the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno, is an overt attempt to disintegrate the unity of the Roman Catholic Church in this country and to break its centuries-old bond of communion with the Apostolic See of St. Peter. 

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The priests dismissed from the Franciscan Order, as well as those who in disobedience to their religious and Church superiors, who invited a non-Catholic to preside at a Catholic rite, are directly acting against the holiness of the sacraments and the unity of the Church.”

The Franciscans seem to have clear “liberal” tendencies” including, inter alia, problems with obedience to legitimate episcopal and canonically established authorities. Given such an umbrous historical context, it is a good thing that The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) spent four years (1974-78) developing an objective set of “Positive” and “Negative” criteria to assist episcopal authorities with their apostolic and canonical duty of discerning the authenticity of alleged apparitions and surrounding events/circumstances such as those associated with Medjugore. 

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Criteria established by CDF for the Discernment of Apparitions

A) Positive Criteria:

a) Moral certitude, or at least great probability of the existence of the fact, acquired by means of a serious investigation;

b) Particular circumstances relative to the existence and to the nature of the fact, that is to say:

1. Personal qualities of the subject or of the subjects (in particular, psychological equilibrium, honesty and.rectitude of moral life, sincerity and habitual docility towards Ecclesiastical Authority, the capacity to return to a normal regimen of a life of faith, etc.);
2. As regards revelation: true theological and spiritual doctrine and immune from error;
3. Healthy devotion and abundant and constant spiritual fruit (for example, spirit of prayer, conversion, testimonies of charity, etc.).

B) Negative Criteria:

a) Manifest error concerning the fact.
b) Doctrinal errors attributed to God himself, or to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or to some saint in their.manifestations, taking into account however the possibility that the subject might have added, even unconsciously, purely human elements or some error of the natural order to an authentic supernatural revelation (cf. Saint Ignatius, Exercises, no. 336).
c) Evidence of a search for profit or gain strictly connected to the fact.
d) Gravely immoral acts committed by the subject or his or her followers when the fact occurred or in connection with it.
e) Psychological disorder or psychopathic tendencies in the subject, that with certainty influenced on the presumed supernatural fact, or psychosis, collective hysteria or other things of this kind.

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Major Players in the Medjugorje Affair

The Clergy Father TomislavThe Bishops Father Tomislav The Seers                                Supporting Cast

Father Jozo Zovko               Bishop Zanic………………………..Vicka Ivankovic                      Bishop Hnilica
Father Tomislav Vlasic…….. Bishop Peric……………………….. Ivan Dragicevic                      Mark Miravalle
Father Iveca Vego…………………………………………………………..Marja Pavolovic
Father Iveca Vego…………………………………………………………..Marijana Dragicevic
Father Iveca Vego…………………………………………………………..Jakov Colo
Father Iveca Vego…………………………………………………………..Ivanka Ivankovic
…………………………………………………………………………………………

The Bishops

Bishop Pavao Zanic

Prior to the apparitions in 1981,  Pavao Zanic, the Bishop  of Mostar declared  two Franciscan Friars, Ivica Vego and Ivan Prusin, suspended and endeavored to have them expelled from the Franciscan Order. The two refused to relinquish their ministries, leading to increased and ever-spiraling controversy.  Shortly thereafter, Our Lady reportedly appeared to five teenagers (and 1 boy of 10) closely connected with the two friars.  On January 11, 1982, Bishop Žanić established a diocesan commission to scrutinize the purported occurrences.

The Bishop of Mostar, however, has not been in charge of issue since 1986. In April of that year, Bishop Zanic presented the CDF (headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) with an unfavorable report. Thereafter, Cardinal Ratzinger, acting as Prefect for the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF), relieved Bishop Zanic of the burden and placed it in the hands of the Yugoslavian Bishops Conference, which, since the break-up of Yugoslavia, has become the Episcopal Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Then in January of 1987 Bishop Žanić, himself, along with Cardinal Kuharić (President of the Yugoslav Bishop’s Conference) issued a joint statement announcing the formation of a new Commission, as requested by Cardinal Ratzinger, to be overseen by the Yugoslavian Bishop’s. Instead of listening to endless speculation articulated by Medjugore zealots, speculation about how Bishop Zanic was “sacked” by Rome due to his ineptitude etc., it is actually beneficial to look at the documented reason for the shift from the Local Bishop’s Conference to the National Bishop’s Conference. According to Cardinal Kuharic (who headed the National Bishop’s Commission) and to Bishop Zanic (whom Cardinal Ratzinger named as “Co-Chair), according to the Co-Chairs of the new Commission of the National Bishop’s Conference themselves, the reason for the shift had nothing to do with ineptitude or the need to “sack” a rancorous bishop; the reason is simply canonical:

“In accordance with the canonical regulations which treat the matters of discernment of alleged apparitions and private revelations, the Diocesan Commission formed for that purpose by the Bishop of Mostar, the local Ordinary, investigated the events of Medjugorje. During the inquiry these events under investigation have appeared to go much beyond the limits of the diocese. Therefore, on the basis of the said regulations, it became fitting to continue the work at the level of the Bishops’ Conference, and thus to form a new Commission for that purpose.”

Even Medjugore devote and cleric Rene Laurentin, recognized the fact:

“When a phenomenon of apparitions takes on international proportions, or when qualified groups from among the faithful demand Rome’s intervention, the Holy See itself assumes responsibility.”

As will be seen below, the CDF eventually reaffirmed Bishop Zanic and seconded his disapproval of pilgrimages to Medjugore. This eventuality was foreshadowed at the close of the statement in which Bishop Zanich and Cardinal Kuharic announced the formation of the Yugoslav Bishop’s Conference to further investigate the Medjugore phenomenon, a phenomenon that had reached international proportions; they iterated ideas that were clearly in accordance with Zanic’s own views of the matter:

“It is not permitted to organize either pilgrimages or other religious manifestations based on an alleged supernatural character attributed to Medjugorje’s events. Marian devotion, legitimate and recommended by the Church, must be in accordance with the directives of the Magisterium, and especially the apostolic encyclical (exhortation) “Marialis Cultus”.

According to Marialis Cultus:

“The Blessed Virgin’s exemplary holiness encourages the faithful to “raise their eyes to Mary who shines forth before the whole community of the elect as a model of the virtues.” It is a question of solid, evangelical virtues: faith and the docile acceptance of the Word of God; generous obedience; genuine humility; solicitous charity; profound wisdom; worship of God manifested in alacrity in the fulfillment of religious duties, in gratitude for gifts received, in her offering in the Temple and in her prayer in the midst of the apostolic community… her virginal purity…. These virtues of the Mother will also adorn her children who steadfastly study her example in order to reflect it in their own lives.”

While waiting for the Yugoslav Bishop’s report, it became increasingly evident to the bishop that the Franciscan spiritual directors and conferees of the seers were deficient in many of these virtues and promoting unapproved devotion to Our Lady of Medjugorje, he remained steadfast in his negative judgement. By March of 1990 the bishop was so convinced of the errancy of the apparitions that he made public his profession: The Truth About Medjugorje, wherein he writes,

“I have already declared earlier and now I repeat the same declaration, that if Our Lady leaves a sign which the “seers” are speaking of, I’ll make a pilgrimage from Mostar to Medjugorje (30 km) on my knees and beg the Franciscans and the “seers” for forgiveness.”

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“On the move are tourist agencies, pilgrimages, prayerbooks written by two Franciscans Vego and Prusina who were thrown out of the OFM Order, published in many languages in 600,000 copies, fanatical prayer groups that are inspired by the apparent messages of Our Lady and the great motivator of all – money.”

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“One month after the beginning of the “apparitions” I went to Medjugorje to question the ‘seers’. I asked each of them to take an oath on the cross and demanded that they must speak the truth. (This conversation and oath was recorded on tape). The first one was Mirjana: “We went to look for our sheep when at once…” (The associate pastor in the parish interrupted and told me that they actually went out to smoke, which they hid from their parents). “Wait a minute Mirjana, you’re under oath. Did you go out to look for your sheep?” She put her hand over her mouth, “forgive me, we went out to smoke.” She than showed me the watch on which the “miracle” occurred because the hands of the watch had gone haywire…. I told her not to mention that a miracle occurred. Yet, on cassettes taped later on, she went on to speak of how a miracle occurred with the watch and that initially they had gone out to search for their sheep.”

Accordingly, on  April 10 1991, the  Yugoslavian Bishop’s Conference promulgated a statement, known as the “Zadar Declaration“, which confirmed Zanic’s position while leaving the whole question open to further inquiry:

“On the basis of the investigations so far it can not be affirmed that one is dealing with supernatural apparitions and revelations….Yet the gathering of the faithful from various parts of the world to Medjugorje, inspired by reasons of faith or other motives, require the pastoral attention and care, first of all, of the local Bishop (the Bishop of Mostar) and then of the other bishops with him, so that in Medjugorje and all connected with it, a healthy devotion towards the Blessed Virgin Mary according to the teachings of the Church (according to the “bishops”  not the Medjugore Franciscans) may be promoted.

The Zadar Declaration left the doors to future scrutiny open; it also clearly indicated (and indicates) that the Yugoslavian Bishop’s Conference found nothing that verified claims that Medjugore has a supernatural origin in God. Moreover, since it did not overrule trips to Yugoslavia, it did specify that visitors should be provided with pastoral care and authentic Marian spirituality under the direction of the local bishop (again, not the Franciscans – unless they have the Local Bishop’s approbation).

This means that the Zadar Declaration did not give permission to foster devotion to “Our Lady of Medjugorje”; this remains a current impossibility since it has not been established that the Virgin Mary is appearing at Medjugore. Rather, it has been established that it “cannot be affirmed” that anything supernatural is occurring there.

Five years later, Archbishop Bertone, Secretary of the CDF, made it clear (March 23, 1996) that the faithful could go to Medjugorje but NOT if the trip was promoted as a pilgrimage or journey to a place of authentic Marian apparitions or as an official diocesan or parish led pilgrimage.

“Official pilgrimages to Medjugorje, understood as a place of authentic Marian apparitions, are not permitted to be organized either on the parish or on the diocesan level, because that would be in contradiction to what the Bishops of former Yugoslavia affirmed in their fore mentioned Declaration.”

In the meantime, Bishop Žanić, in accord with the Zadar Statement, continued to exercise his legitimate episcopal duties by forbidding priests from organizing official parish-diocesan pilgrimages, pilgrimages that ascribed or presume supernatural events are occurring, or have occurred, at Medjugorje. Again, he was disobeyed by the Franciscans. There is no problem with disobedience from diocesan clergy; “not one” of the hundred (then ministering)…accept them as authentic“

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Bishop Žanić retired in 1993 at age 75 and was succeeded by Bishop Ratko Perić.

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Bishop Ratko Peric

Bishop Ratko Peric was born on February 2, 1944. In December of 1979, he became Rector of the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome in Rome and later taught ecumenical theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University until 1992. Like his predecessor, Bishop Zanic, Bishop Peric doubts the authenticity of the apparitions; he refers to them as a “religious show” and “spectaculum mundo. Consequently, he defers to the statement of Yugoslavia Bishop’s Conference of 1991 and interprets it to mean that the Virgin Mary is not appearing at Medjugorje.

On April 1, 1995  Bishop Perić was kidnapped by Croatian militia of the HVO (anti-Serb and anti-Muslim Croatian nationalists) after he tried to replace Franciscan HVO sympathizers with less nationalistic diocesan priests.

Bishop Peric has pointed out that diocesan commissions studied the apparitions from 1982-1984 and then again from 1984-1986.  These diocesan studies were followed by the Yugoslavian Bishops’ Conference, which studied them from 1987 to 1990. All three commissions have concluded the same thing: It cannot be affirmed that a supernatural event occurred or is occurring on Medjugore.

Under his tutelage, Pope Benedict XVI commissioned a team that after four year of investigation wrapped up its work in 2014 and presented it to the CDF, which is currently reviewing the report and expected to rule on it soon, perhaps for the 100th anniversary celebration of Fatima.

During his entire reign, Peric has consistently believed and stated, “these are not real apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” He bases his claim on a thorough review of the transcripts, which include interviews with the visionaries from the very beginning that provide him ample reason to doubt the authenticity of the alleged events. Some of these reasons he wrote about include:

• Friars Slavko Barbaric and Tomislav Vlasic, spiritual directors of the seers, filtered their so-called messages from the “Gospa”.

In the Chronicle of April 12 1984, Vlasic recorded:

“Today I spoke with all the seers. I brought to their attention again the necessity of not releasing statements to anyone without informing us.”

• The children reported that the Madonna taught them that those who ascend to heaven do so in both body and soul

Finally, Bishop Peric points out that after Father Vasic was removed, Our Lady wanted Slavko Barbaric to replace him as spiritual director of the seers so Barbaric could document the apparitions and messages.  Slavko Barbaric passed away in AD 2000, and the alleged apparitions continue to this day… without Slavko Barbaric.  Another “vision” that never came true.

On  January 3, 1985 Bishop Zanic asked the Franciscan Provincial to transfer Friar Barbaric:

“I ask you to transfer friar Slavko Barbaric from Medjugorje to another position. He at Medjugorje, on the very important questions regarding the alleged “apparitions” of the Madonna is making propaganda in a way completely opposed to the directions I have given many times orally and in writing.”

Apparently, the Virgin Mary had other plans, contrary to those of the bishop.  She expressed her desire that the friar remain at Medjugorje to help guide events and to chronicle her visits. Writing in third person, Friar Slavko recorded this message in the Chronicle:

“3 February 1985. (Sunday) The vision came suddenly. Shorter this evening than in some days, just 2 minutes. Marija, Ivan, and Jakov were present. The message was for friar Slavko, as promised in the vision yesterday. It was given by Ivan. It went as follows: “I would like that Slavko remain here, and attend to all the details and the notes so that at the end of my visit we will have a synoptic image of everything. I am praying especially for Slavko at this time and for all those who work in the parish.”

Unfortunately, Father Slavko died on November 25, 2000 years before the visions ended, years before a synoptic version could be completed as the Gospa had indicated. In other words, her remarks about Friar Slavko preparing a “synoptic image of everything” were incorrect; Father Slavko died making this a false prophecy.

For reasons such as these, and many others, Bishop Peric remains skeptical, more than skeptical, he continues to deny the validity of the apparitions. At a recent confirmation ceremony in which one of the seers, Ivan Dragicevic, was present, the bishop pronounced from the pulpit:

“Apollos (St. Paul) has shown us that the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace is more important than any personal talents, intractable charisms, speaking in tongues, falling on the floor, monthly double messages and tenfold talents. Our faith is founded on the Bible and tradition through the Magisterium of the Church, and not private hallucinations which occur three times daily.”

 

GO TO: PART TWO: “Medjugore Saga Priests & Bishops to Seers & Advocates : Ivan Dragizevic”

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New Era World News

Intelligence Report
American Foundations #6

WHAT IS LIBERALISM? Previous Intelligence Reports have examined the philosophical roots of liberalism and its impact on American political foundations. The intent of this report is to provide a brief overview and summary with additional information to complement and round out our study before moving to finalize this series with a report on “Neoliberalism”.

Liberalism is a broad social, economic, political, and moral paradigm conceived as a radical social movement fermented in the minds of 18th century avant-garde political philosophers. Birthed in the French salons (pictured above), English ale houses, and Masonic lodges of Europe, Liberalism revolutionized human thinking about man and society, about economics and politics, and about church and state relations in opposition to one thousand years of Christian social-thinking, which it aimed at curtailing and gradually eliminating. Because the Protestant Reformation had enabled English monarchs to gain ascendancy over, and then control of, the church, it helped prepare the way for the conception and birth of liberalism in Great Britain from which it fund its way to the continent where it gave way to revolution.

Once Henry VIII (1534) issued the “Act of Royal Supremacy”[1], the English Crown moved to violently oppress dissenters followed by seizure of Church property and the torturous derogation of English common law that had protected the property rights of peasants for centuries. It was not long until the social function of private property insisted upon by the Church gave way to new liberal ideas about private property antithetical to the Gospels, to long-standing Catholic tradition and to the very nature of man  made in the image of God. The liberal has their own ideas about property and about God, but before they could advance their ideas, the monarchs had to first solidify rule over both the temporal and spiritual realms. Subsequently, it was the state, with input from appointed clerics, that determined both what was dogmatic and what heretical, what was orthodox and what heterodox. In short, the state unleashed a cultural and religious kulturkampf against the Catholic faith in order to solidify its dominance over the political and economic affairs of the temporal order and over what it is that people must believe in the order of salvation as well.[2]

The omnicompetent Reformation and post-Reformation state not only ransacked the Church, it also undertook a series of attacks on Christian common law[3] and private property stripping it from the convents and monasteries and placing it in the hands of acquiescing Protestant and Catholic land owners. Property rights were redefined by new statutory decrees in disregarded of Catholic common law that had for centuries protected the property claims of peasants (they could not be alienated from the land). It was just a matter of time until the new class of acquiescent landlord’s disregarded the ancient communal aspects of private ownership and thereafter forced helpless peasants off of their newly enclosed “private property” thereby initiating new forms of pauperism, propertyless wage labor and social disruption that has fluctuated, but remained constant, ever since.

The absolutist state also extended its reach into commerce and interfered in the economy with the aim of shielding national commercial interests from competition by implementing a series of political acts resulting in broad scale regulation and the imposition of tariffs and trade restrictions known as “Mercantilism”. Mercantilism was intended to assure a positive trade balance but, due to the restrictions required to obtain such a balance, it led to international economic conflict among competing nations and the impetus for colonialism instead. The emergence of mercantilism (political interference in the economy to the detriment of global peace) and absolutism (total control of the state and political inference in religion to the detriment of moral disorder and civil peace) along with the rise of a new class of property-less paupers, Protestant Lords and soon to be liberal landowners, resulted in economic distress exacerbated by growing religious intolerance, which in turn led to social unrest that, taken together, fueled the flames of revolution that gave birth to a new world order, otherwise known as the “New Order of the Ages’ (Novus ordo seclorum) the goal of French “philsophes” and their American counterparts.

The “New Order of the Ages” ushered in a prolonged period of social change whereby (1) the economic sphere was to be liberated from political control (mercantilism) resulting in free trade (2) private property was redefined and protected as an absolute and inviolable individual right[4] severed from previous common law requirements that gave ownership a communal dimension intended to protect the peasants who lived on the estates, (3) the churches, at least in America, were to be liberated from state dominance and privatized resulting in the gradual secularization of the public forum, and (4) the state was to be limited in its powers and subject to secular constitutional law deriving its authority from the people (popular sovereignty) rather than from the divine law rooted in God’s sovereignty as was the ancient common law of Christendom

The birth of secular constitutional law represented a radical break from the long established common law tradition of England. According to Dr. Michael P. Foley,

“The Christian pedigree of common law was clearly recognized by jurisprudence theorists like Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Law of England was to exert an enormous influence on British and early American law. Indeed, in 1829 Joseph Story (American Supreme Court Justice, 1811-1845) could write, “There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations.” (On a side note, the shift to a pure secularism that eventually did occur in the United States seems to be the result of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who ridiculed the law’s relation to the divine and instituted a positivist approach based on judiciary opinion. The planks for Holmes’s rejection, however, had been laid a century earlier by Thomas Jefferson, who vigorously (but wrongly) denied that Christianity is or “ever was a part of the common law.”)[5]

If the absolutist state could become omni-competent and control the church thereby resulting in religious persecution, exacerbated by the institutionalization of mercantilism, and the un-mooring of law from its Christian common law roots resulting in property abuse and pauperism, if the absolutist state could do these things, if it could grow so autocratic and oppressive, it could also be used by revolutionary “Philosophes” and radicalized “Sons of Liberty” as a a valid excuse used to justify and to craft cunning arguments for the abolition of monarchy and for the removal of religion from the public forum thereby secularizing the state in the name of “freedom”. The whole thing was close enough in time to be associated with Medieval Catholicism on which all the abuses were blamed rather than on the break with Catholicism that gave rise to the abuses. In other words, mercantilism was presented as a Medieval idea as was absolutism, when in fact both mercantilism and absolutism were products of the Protestant Reformation, a rejection of Medieval solidarism.

This helps the reader to understand Karl Marx’s insistence that communism necessitated not one but two revolutions.  First, the Catholic Aristocracy and Clergy had  to be undone by a “Bourgeois Revolution” led by the nouveau riche middle class of Protestant merchants and financiers, which would open the way to liberalism also known as classical capitalism (at least the economic dimension). The revolutions in England and esp. France were thus bourgeois revolutions designed to eradicate the Catholic aristocracy; they were to be followed by a further “Proletariat Revolution” which would bring down the new class of Protestant capitalists.  The latter however was a future event.  During the interregnum liberal democracy and liberal capitalism were to become ascendant due to the cunning work of liberal philosophes scattered in Masonic lodges throughout Europe. It was a crafty solution whereby absolutism and mercantilism were blamed on Medieval culture despite the glaring facts of history for those adroit to master that subject. The attack on Medieval culture along with new ideas about economic, political, and individual freedoms, otherworldly known as liberalism, were all parts of a broad social program for a “New Order of the Ages”, which helps us to understand Jefferson’s specious assertion whereby he unsuccessfully denies the Christian origins of the common law.

Liberalism was therefore, an 18th century cry for liberty in response to the oppressive 16-17th century absolutist state, but it was more than this. In the guise of attacking the manifest and objectionable tenets of absolutism and mercantilism, liberalism was, and is, more than anything else, a desire to be free of the economic, moral, and political restraints associated with Christendom, a desire to be unburdened from the “shackles” of Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy that provided the basis for an objective and universal moral order derived from reason. More importantly, liberalism represented a desire, on the part of a small cabal of Philosophes, deists, epicureans, theosophists and other anti-Christian humanists, to be “liberated” from Christian principles such as chastity and divine love, obedience and priestly authority and from such burdensome inhibitions as a spiritual check on morality and the just exercise of political authority. In short, liberalism seeks to be free of any revealed principles that inhibit freedom to do what one wants rather than what one should. Liberalism seeks to disconnect itself from any philosophical or theological restraint and to be governed by philosophical schools that derive their morality from the practical intellect severed from faith and speculative reason as discussed in previous Intelligence Reports 5 and 6. In America, the cause of liberal freedom was unwittingly facilitated, as it had been in England, by Protestant Reformers who so hated philosophy and reason and so exaggerated sacred scripture and the role of “faith alone” (unaided by reason, which Luther called the “Devil’s greatest whore”), that faith became objectionable to “reasonable” men who seized the opportunity to promote a new “Age of Reason”. For Luther, reason philosophy and speculative reason – not practical reason – (those unschooled in philosophy fail to make this distinction) were sex toys of the devil:

Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom … Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.” (Martin Luther, Erlangen v. 16, pgs. 142-148)

Given this early Protestant attitude toward reason, it is not surprising that men such as Thomas Paine, a liberal propagandist and a “Son of Liberty, who honored reason as a god thought such objections to be not only puerile but “torturous”.

“But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times, when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Christian religion; and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability and irrationality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved.”

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“He may believe that Jesus was crucified, because many others were crucified, but who is to prove he was crucified for the sins of the world? This article has no evidence, not even in the New Testament; and if it had, where is the proof that the New Testament, in relating things neither probable nor provable, is to be believed as true?”

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“When an article in a creed does not admit of proof nor of probability, the salvo is to call it revelation; but this is only putting one difficulty in the place of another, for it is as impossible to prove a thing to be revelation as it is to prove that Mary was gotten with child by the Holy Ghost.”

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“Here it is that the religion of Deism is superior to the Christian Religion. It is free from all those invented and torturing articles that shock our reason or injure our humanity, and with which the Christian religion abounds. Its creed is pure, and sublimely simple. It believes in God, and there it rests” (Thomas Paine).[6]

The Christian faith is clear about the purpose of life and about sin. It protects freedom to pursue all that is beautiful, all that is noble and all that is true, it protects freedom of conscience and the right to live by and to publicly express the tenets of one’s faith. In short, it claims that freedom is given to know, to love, and to be united with the highest good which is the Holy Trinity. It does not place limits on religion, such as expressing one’s faith in public schools and universities (while simultaneously protecting the rights of deviant minorities to express theirs) as liberalism does. Instead, it places limits on the illicit use of freedom that rebels against restraint; it places limits on the explosion of the lower sentient passions that if left unchecked result in compulsive neurosis, chemical dependency, and other maladies that enslave in the name of freedom, such as liberalism.

The best way to promote liberalism then was to stealthily restrain Christianity and its corollary, the proper use of reason, rex ratio. This was accomplished not by fair intellectual debate with the scholastics et al, but by rebelling against absolutist tyranny (a tyranny that had nothing to do with Catholicism, in fact, it was itself a rebellion against Catholicism – Henry VIII) in the name of freedom under the sway of practical reason (common-sense only, common sense disconnected from ontology and metaphysics which are the domain of the speculative intellect). Practical reason un-moored from the moral precepts derived by the speculative intellect could be employed in any number of ways to support the ever-growing craze for “freedom”. To be sure, liberalism has its own moral guidelines, but these guidelines are rooted in a faulty understanding of human nature and of the human intellect. From the liberal perspective, the human mind is unable to obtain knowledge of spiritual nature of the human soul; therefore, the human soul does not exist:

“To talk of immaterial existences, is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God are immaterial is to say, they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: … I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by [John] Locke.”[7]

Basic adherents of liberalism reject classical metaphysics and Christian spirituality; however, the more adept theosophical branches of liberalism do accept the immorality of the soul and Gnostic forms of mysticism (that is another topic for is another time). Since liberals do not derive their knowledge of the soul from metaphysics, they must derive their knowledge of the soul from heretical schools of philosophy or from some faith perspective, any faith perspective, Hindu, American Indian, Sufi, Jewish mysticism, from any faith, even from certain Christian sects. Some liberals, like Thomas Jefferson, following in the line of Epicurus, were professed materialists who believed in the existence of the soul but reduced it to some type of material existence, something akin to what New Agers refer to as “ether”, a rarefied and ethereal type of matter that, like helium, is so light and bereft of density as to be almost celestial.

Although many founders possessed metaphysical insight, it was derived from some faith perspective or from some philosophical system such as neo-Platonism. Nonetheless, as far as Aristotle and Christian scholastic philosophy go, most founders rejected this type of metaphysics as unreasonable. However, the leading lights among them (Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Paine et al)  did accept the branch of moral philosophy known as ethics. Like the Roman philosophers before them, the American founders preferred applied or practical thinking. Since the study of ethics is reasonable and capable of being grasped (in part) by the “practical intellect” it was widely accepted. The problem is that applied thinking infers that some intellectual, concept is being applied, like a theory or some speculative truths discovered by the higher rational mind. Since the Framers, in general, denied the possibility of grasping higher spiritual truths through the operation of the higher intellect (metaphysics), their ethical applications were based on nothing but unsupported beliefs, tenets held on the authority of long rejected philosophical mystery cults, or on common sense operations that seemed to indicate that human beings are self-interested and therefore depraved animals.

Most leading American founders were ready to accept either esoteric knowledge or knowledge derived from common sense or both. Since the former (esoteric) is not well documented, except by inference, it is best to focus on the latter, viz., common sense of the practical intellect. Since the practical intellect rejects metaphysics derived from reason, it chooses to focus on practical reality as sensed in the world around it, common sense. Anything that cannot be grasped by the practical intellect is rejected as unreasonable; if it cannot be empirically verified it must therefore be rejected.  Therefore, articles of belief, such as the mysteries of the Christian faith, were rejected as unreasonable. As a result, belief in such things as the resurrection, incarnation, the Holy Trinity, and the way of the cross, were booted out of the broad public domain and into the constrained private domain where they could do little harm but much good.

Belief in such silly things as the Holy Trinity and the parables of Jesus can do much good because they carry with them a reasonable moral code that, according to the tenets of liberalism, wise men adopt from their study of (secular) philosophy disconnected from both Catholicism and Protestantism, but appearing in the guise of both . Everyone else, that is those who do not have the intellectual wherewithal to derive wisdom form the study of pagan philosophy, either lack a moral code and are therefore a danger to society, or are left to garner their morality from the Christian faith or some other faith perspective graced with a moral code. Since morality is necessary for communal existence, liberals like Jefferson et al considered it better for the masses to derive a moral code from a faith perspective than to not have none at all. Morality is the bottom line. For a classical liberal, the impartation of a moral code is the sole purpose and essence of religion, all the rest such as the parables, miracles, the resurrection from the dead etc. are fairy tales and fables for uneducated, ignorant, and foolish people who are in need of moral guidance but unable to use their minds to acquire it; so they are forced to get their morals from faith.

“The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel vengeful and capricious… One only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites” (Thomas Jefferson).

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“As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed” (John Adams).[8]

Liberals elevate reason above faith, and thus have faith in nothing but that which is reasonable:

“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck” (Thomas Jefferson). [9]

The Christian faith is not reasonable and therefore assigned a place among the foolish and the gullible. According to Voltaire, one of the grand patriarchs of Anti-christian liberalism

“The Bible. That is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rogues teach and young children are made to learn by heart” *

According to Framers like Jefferson, faith is for the intellectually immature, the church is full of impostors, chief among them being the apostles and St. Paul who added the stories, fables, and myths to sacred scripture in order to dupe the ignorant:

“Among the sayings and discourses imputed to [Jesus] by His biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same Being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great . . . corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus” (Thomas Jefferson).

In assigning the Christian faith and the wisdom of the cross a place among gullible and the foolish (and assigning the place of wisdom to those who use their reason to reject faith and then to proceed in pursuit of happiness according to the light of their own intellect) such men convict themselves of the very foolishness that they despise.

“For the word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject…Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? …For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:  But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness:  But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1: 18-24).

Since liberalism rejects the Christian faith and metaphysics, liberal moral guidelines are not derived from revelation or from speculative reason by means of a metaphysical analysis of human nature (body and soul) followed by further analysis of virtue culminating in wisdom and love. Liberal moral guidelines are acquired solely by practical reason from (1) pagan-philosophy (esoteric or materialistic) (2) an observation and analysis of everyday human conduct (under the sway of passions), what political scientists, beginning with Machiavelli, refer to as realpolitik, and from (3) a misunderstood principle of “self-interest”. They misunderstand self interest because they misunderstand the “self”. Knowledge of the self, of the human person is derived from metaphysics, which liberals, philosophes, materialists and even Gnostics (when more fully understood) despise – Gnostics speak a lot about metaphysics, but their idea of what it is is rooted in pagan cosmology far removed from the thought of Aquinas and Aristotle.

Summary

In its desire to be free of economic, moral, and political restraints, liberalism favors (a) limited government, (b) unregulated free trade, (c) economic life unburdened by Christian moral principles, (d) the privatization of religion, and (e) the resultant secularization of public and communal life, under the direction of secular human law alienated from divine law. Liberalism can thus be summed up in one code word: “liberty”, which is part of larger slogan; “liberty, equality, and fraternity”, the 18th century revolutionary banner of the French avante garde for a New Order of the Ages instituted by secular revolutions in France, America and throughout the world.

Classical liberalism is therefore more than an economic theory; it is a comprehensive Antichristian theory for secular political, economic, and social or moral upheaval euphemistically referred to as “development”. It stands on three economic, political, and moral pillars that form one cohesive political ideology.

Economic liberalism promotes unrestricted use of private property, unregulated free markets, and free trade. Economic liberalism was aided by its being juxtaposed to the nostrum known as mercantilism.

Political liberalism favors limited government that protects individual rights, guarantees freedom to pursue one’s interests (without adequately defining what self-interest is), exaggerates and incompletely, and thus falsely, defines the concept of private property[10], and introduces democratic forms of mixed government without duly considering the Christian origins of law or properly educating citizens for the exercise of political power. Political liberalism was facilitated by being juxtaposed to the anti-Catholic nostrum known as absolutism.

Moral Liberalism favors laws derived from practical reason divorced from faith and speculative reason.  By avoiding speculative reason, moral liberalism avoids that branch of philosophy that gives us knowledge of the human soul, which is necessary to derive knowledge of human spiritual potentials. Liberalism is thus rooted in a limited definition of human nature that reduces self-interest to a pleasure pain calculus of the practical intellect aided by limited observations of corrupt human behavior. Liberalism is therefore unable to correctly talk about human moral ends because it does not know what a human being is. Because it lacks a metaphysical foundation, liberalism is adverse to the spiritual development inherent in human nature, to theology and to revelation, which are welcomed by the student of classical metaphysics.

Liberalism thus was a war waged against Christianity under the banner of freedom from economic, political tyranny that had nothing to do with Christianity. It was on these two coattails of anti-mercantilism and anti-absolutism that anti-Christian moral liberty found its way into the modern world under the guise of reason divorced from faith, that is, the God of Nature prominent in American colonial writings.

In summary, the growth of liberalism was greatly aided by juxtaposing free trade to the economic nostrum of mercantilism, by further juxtaposing democracy, to the political nostrum of absolutism, and by stripping metaphysics from theology thereby leaving a religion of reason.

By juxtaposing “enlightened” liberal ideas about free trade, limited government, and morality rooted in science and “practical reason”, by juxtaposing ideas such as these to objectionable quackery like “absolutism” and “mercantilism”, and by successfully associating these things with medieval “Christian quackery that had to be discarded”, liberalism was able to succeed in its attempts to promote the rejection of medievalism, and along with it the burial of Catholic ideas necessary for moral and spiritual renewal of the social order. It was not Catholicism that caused absolutism and Mercantilism; these were both anti-Catholic social and political movements strenuously opposed by the Church.[11]

In the process of opposing mercantilism and religious and political absolutism, liberals successfully facilitated deregulation of the economy (thereby permitting the widespread growth of immoral financial transactions associated with capitalism) and the objectionable privatization of religion. The latter was facilitated and brought about by the evils of absolutism and the objectionable control of the churches by tyrants, which provided the liberals with a much needed argument justifying religious freedom and the separation of church and state. Interestingly, the tyranny and absolutism that facilitated the separation was blamed on the Catholics, when in reality, the Pilgrims fled England from Protestant tyranny, the same Protestant tyranny that was making martyrs of the Catholics. The end result is a secular political order steeped in moral relativity, which is detrimental to both Protestants and Catholics alike.  They have much more in common with each other than either does with the secular regime that dominates the public forum.

All together, liberalism resulted in the privatization of religion, the secularization of the public forum, an incorrect exaggeration of the right to private property (leading to pauperism and wage labor rather than a flourishing class of yeoman farmers and craftsmen), the separation of ethics (that is, ethics rooted in human nature and open to theology) from economics and politics, and the reduction of morality to self-interest and utility all ratified by the democratic principle of majority rule and a deficient understanding of the natural law, which have brought us to where we are today.

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ENDNOTES

[1] Similar trends occurred in France as the Philosophes established absolute rule over the Catholic Church by implementing the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy” (1790). Similarly, in Switzerland, the state exercised authority to enforce the reforms implemented by John Calvin. Although in both cases the rule was exercised by civil officers rather than by kings, the effect was similar.

[2] Martin Luther denied any limitation of political power either by Pope or people, nor can it be said that he showed any sympathy for representative institutions; he upheld the inalienable and divine authority of kings in order to hew down the Upas tree of Rome. There had been elaborated at this time a theory of unlimited jurisdiction of the crown and of non-resistance upon any pretense (Cambridge Modern History, Vol III, p. 739).

[3] The Ancient Laws and Institutes of England “. Instituted by King Alfred the Great. Their profound religious spirit clearly appears from the fact that the “Code of Law” began with the Ten Commandments, followed by many of the Mosaic Precepts, added to which is the express solemn sanction given to them by Christ in the Gospel: “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” After quoting the canons of the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem, Alfred refers to the Divine commandment, “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them”, and then declares, “From this one doom, a man may remember that he judge every on righteously, he need heed no other doom-book.” Paraphrased from Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09068a.htm).

“According to the celebrated former British Statesman and Historian Sir Winston Churchill, the roots of King Alfred’s Book of Laws or Dooms came forth from the (long-established) laws of Kent, Mercia and Wessex. All these attempted to blend the Mosaic Code with the Christian principles of Ceito-Brythonic Law and old Germanic customs.”

“Churchill adds that the laws of Alfred, continually amplified by his successors, grew into that body of Customary Law which was administered as (the Common Law) by the Shire and the Hundred Courts (as specified in) Exodus 18:21. That, under the name of the  ‘Laws of St. Edward (A.D. 1042) the last Anglo-Saxon Christian King of England – the Norman kings undertook to respect, after their 1066 invasion and conquest of England and hegemony over Britain. Out of that, with much dexterity by feudal lawyers, the common law emerged (which was re-confirmed by Magna Carta 1215). Quoted from: “KING ALFRED THE GREAT AND OUR COMMON LAW” Prof. Dr. F.N. Lee (http://www.ensignmessage.com/kingalfredthegreat.html)

[4] So that what happened to the Catholic peasants would not happen to the new landlords.

[5] Dr. Michael P. Foley, “The Catholic Contribution to Western Law” https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=11113

[6] “Of The Religion of Deism Compared With the Christian Religion”

[7] Thomas Jefferson letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820.

[8] Letter to F.A. Van der Kamp (1816)

[9] Letter to James Smith (1822)

[10] Liberal advocates of private property rightly claim that “private property” is rooted in the natural law.  Unfortunately, they have a limited conception of human nature and how exactly natural law is rooted in that nature. (For a detailed study of the communal dimensions of human nature, refer to Chapters 5 through 9 of “Trinitarian Humanism”, Marzak, 2015, http://kolbefoundation.org/).

[11] Fortunately, good ideas do not go away and the truth cannot remain suppressed forever (1 Timothy 5:25). Catholic social teaching has been called, “the best kept secret of the Catholic Church.” This well guarded secret is now getting a voice and is beginning to spread around the globe.