There may be some precedence of sorts for the subdued approach of Pope Francis to the hot-button issues of abortion, homosexuality and contraception.
Missing from the hundreds of public messages from Medjugorje over the last thirty years, is any overt condemnation of these and other grievous sins and evils of our era.
It has been said that Medjugorje is the Marian Apparition of the
Vatican II Church. The rationale behind the approach of the Conciliar
Church right up to the papacy of Pope Francis has been to pour forth the
balm of mercy rather than issue condemnations. In his opening speech
for the Council, on Oct. 11, 1962, Pope John XXIII said "Nowadays
however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of
mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the
needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching
rather than by condemnations."
In order to determine
exactly what “Our Lady of Medjugorje” said about the abortion
issue, I went to the website of a major Medjugorje organization
called the Medjugorje Web. This site, www.medjugorje.org,
has a convenient concordance containing all words from the public
messages given by the apparition from 1984 to the present. From March
of 1984 until January of 1987, the public messages were given weekly,
intended mainly for the parish. From January 25, 1987 to the present
the public messages have been occurring monthly, for the whole world.
This makes well over 400 public messages.
In
the Medjugorje Web, one must click on the ‘Concordance’ button,
since using the search box will bring up other references in addition
to the messages. Using the concordance on the Medjugorje Web for the
word ‘abortion’ in these public messages, brings back a result of
ZERO times that the
word was even mentioned, from 1984 to 2014! What makes this quite
amazing is that the visionaries are supposed to receive a total of
ten secrets, some of which concern great chastisements about to
befall humanity because of so much sinfulness in the world. One
would reasonably expect then that the “Gospa” would have
constantly pointed out, over the years, the many sinful behaviours,
such as abortion, that have to be remedied in order to lessen these
chastisements.
Since
the word ‘abortion’ brought no results, I next looked to see how
many times ‘contraception’ was mentioned in all of these hundreds
of messages. Same result – ZERO. Well, how about ‘pornography’
– nope, a ZERO again. What about ‘homosexuality’ or ‘sodomy’
– ZERO. What about ‘adultery’, ‘divorce’, ’fornication’,
‘drugs’ . . . all ZERO. How about ‘murder’ or ‘lust’ -
ZEROES again. Surely the apparition has said something about
‘stealing’, ‘theft’, ‘idolatry’, ‘wrath’, ‘despair’
or ‘greed’ – every one of them a ZERO. Wait, there is one
exception – ‘pride’ resulted in one occurrence. But upon
reading it, the ‘pride’ referred to Satan, not to a sin of
mankind.
And
yet these apparitions are supposed to be ongoing communications and
warnings from the Blessed Virgin Mary urging us to turn back from our
sins or else face great chastisements. The holocaust of legalized
abortion is the defining crime and offense of our era against God,
with millions upon millions of innocent victims. For this cause
alone, God surely has in store for us a great chastisement. Yet in
the public messages delivered over the course of the past thirty
years, we do not hear one peep about abortion from the “Madonna of
Medjugorje.”
But who am I to judge?
But who am I to judge?
