The Medjugorje Deception
The Medjugorje Deception
It was 5 o'clock in the morning and I was lying in my room at the Silver Legacy casino in Reno, Nevada unable to sleep. I was in Reno to meet the husband of a seer, or rather, the seer's ex-husband. Jeff Lopez moved in with Tonie Alcorn in April of 1987 as the result of an affair they had had when both of them were working Wendy's in Denver, Colorado. In March of 91, shortly after pleading guilty to a charge of check fraud, Tonie, who was then known as Theresa Lopez, went to Medjugorje. By November of 1991 she was having her own apparitions and drawing thousands of people to the Cabrini Shrine near Denver, Colorado.
Two years later, Theresa left her husband to become a full-time seer. The last time they were together she told him, "If I get involved with this I can be somebody." Phil Kronzer, the wealthy California businessman who introduced us, had lost his wife to Medjugorje around the time Jeff Lopez had, over the winter of 93- 94. Both of these domestic tragedies began with Medjugorje. They represented just two links in a long chain of fraud and deceit that began on a hillside in Bosnia in 1981. The break-up of these two marriages was one more bad thing that had happened to the world since the Queen of Peace arrived in Yugoslavia in 1981. Proponents of the apparition like to talk about its fruits. All right, let's talk about the fruits: the broken families, the pregnant nuns, the poor people bilked of their money, the division in the Church, the de facto schism, the worst fighting in Europe since World War II, the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Gradno, just five kilometers from Medjugorje all of it followed inexorably from those children on that hill inBosnia in June of 1981.
And then to top it all off, when I got back to my room in Reno I got a call from a man in England telling me that if I went back to Medjugorje the Franciscans were going to have me killed. So add death threats to the list of fruits.
Written by E. Michael Jones. The Medjugorje Deception breaks the conspiracy of silence that has surrounded one of the biggest hoaxes of the 20th century. It tells the full truth . . . from the bloody atrocities during World War II on the other side of Apparition Hill to their bloody sequel in the ethnic cleansing of Mostar's Muslims with money raised by Medjugorje groups. The Medjugorje Deception is more than a book; it's a spiritual work of mercy.
385 pages.
Reviews:
"Michael Jones has been investigating Medjugorje for 10 years. This is his history of the events at Medjugorje, the lives of the people who were changed by them, and the scandels which occurred there."
Theology Digest.
"Perhaps a more precise, and therefore more charitable, title for this book would have been The Medjugorje Illusion. The seers and their promoters are not necessarily engaging in deliberate deception, but rather are the victims of their own illusions. This is, in fact, one of Jones' suggested explanations. The Medjugorje seers have been seeing something, but they are under the illusion that it is from heaven, when its origin may be merely, albeit ominously, preternatural. ... The strength of Jones' argument lies in the accumulation of evidence of a state of spiritual illusion afflicting the seers, devotees, and promotors of the apparitions. He gives the general key to understanding a certain disposition for delusion on the part of orthodox Roman Catholic faithful when he remarks that every time the bishops neglect to discipline a single pro-abortion nun, they send a planeload of pilgrims to Medjugorje. The followers of Medjugorje ... are far more likely to believe some seers who seem to be reaffirming central verities of Catholic faith and practice. Bishops and priests are judged by their acceptance of the apparitions, rather than the converse. This leaves the right-believing faithful open to every kind of fakery, as long as it is 'orthodox.' Jones chronicles numerous examples of this from within the Medjugorje orbit with entertainingly savage clarity."
