Trudging along two miles of country road in Kettle River, Minnesota, I shifted the back carrier that held my three-year-old son. I was joined by 3,500 other pilgrims who had congregated to see if the Virgin Mary would appear as a purported locutionist had reported she would. It was Easter, 1993, and the temperatures were cold enough to keep the thick layer of snow that fell the previous night from melting. With me were my husband, four young boys, and three other families who were part of our family prayer group.
It was the published messages of a supposed locutionist that had inspired our prayer group to form. I had heard his inspirational conversion story in which he went so far as to divorce his second wife and reconcile with his first in order to become fully obedient to God and the Church. Everything I knew about him seemed to be the real deal. And who would make up that the Blessed Mother would appear on a particular date and time? I figured that the tens of thousands of pilgrims in Fatima who witnessed the spinning of the sun and had their soaked clothing dried in an instant when the Blessed Mother appeared as predicted, had less to go on that we did.
I had come because if the appearance did occur I wanted to be there. If it did not, I would return home and continue to practice my faith.
Fraud?
At 2:00, the appointed hour, the pilgrims waited anxiously, gazing upward. The overcast sky, cleared just a bit as the sun showed itself through a thin film of clouds. We all waited and watched, thinking that surely this was the prelude. Then, the clouds closed over the sun.
Nothing more happened. It was a “no show” for the Blessed Mother. Interesting enough, it was also a “no show” for the man who had predicted all this. His friend and business partner, whose farm property held a large cross and the gathering, reported that this man and visionaries throughout the world had been called by the Blessed Mother to come to Medjugorje. Weird.
It takes awhile to digest such an ordeal. I can only think fraud or deception. Initially, not all were ready to condemn the man. If the messages drew people closer to God and his Blessed Mother, how could they be false? Would the devil be behind the forming of prayer groups?
It did not make sense. How could all these good fruits not be from God? Were such seers themselves duped and heard or saw messages that were really not from God? Did they suffer from mental illness and imagine it all? Or were they frauds that gave only an outward appearance of religious devotion?
Holy Love
In recent years, some friends went on a pilgrimage from North Dakota to visit the Holy Love Ministries, an 83-acred site in North Ridgeville, OH. This is where purported messages and apparitions to a housewife and supposed visionary Maureen Sweeney-Kyle have been reported to be occurring for twenty years.
Catholics were coming from across the country and even from other parts of the world to visit this Shrine. The place has all the usual Catholic trappings — chapel, statues, rosaries, and religious bookstore, yet it is not Catholic.
I decided to write about it. I wrote my first article after interviewing the Vicar General of the diocese and also someone from the Holy Love administration. I learned that the reason this group is not Catholic is that the local bishop would not give an imprimatur to one of the supposed messages from the Blessed Mother to Maureen. The bishop had been presented with a prayer for an imprimatur and he was willing to give it the official assurance that nothing in the prayer was against Catholic teaching and had it officially approval. But then when they tried to slip the message in, he told them no way.
The group then went to a bishop at another diocese. When bishop #1 saw that bishop #2 had given his imprimatur, he asked him if he was aware his imprimatur was being used for both the prayer and the message. He was not and pulled it.
At that point, Maureen and group declared that the Blessed Mother wants these particular messages for all denominations, not just Catholics. She said, “We are not under the Catholic Church because we are for all people.”
Even though the messages, supposedly from Jesus and Mary, encourage Catholic devotions, they have declared that this ministry is ecumenical and, therefore, does not have to answer to Catholic authority. That alone should stand as a warning. John Paul II frequently appealed to Catholics to be ecumenical—to share their faith—not to leave it.
The funny thing is that “all people” don’t go to Marian shrines, just Catholics. And everything about the place looks Catholic. Yet everything about how they operate looks like a fraud to me. But when I reported this in my first article, I took a beating. My email inbox filled with some emails both in agreement and in vehement disagreement.
Later, when the local bishop came out and officially condemned the site and messages, I did what I had vowed never to do again: write an article exposing Holy Love Ministries, Proclamation on Holy Love Ministries Will Test Hearts and Obedience. With the official condemnation, I expected less backlash. I got more. (Please, if this article has your fired up, put your comments under the article. Don’t email me at home on this.)
How can we know?
In the end, how is a person to discern what is true and what is not? How could false messages result in so many good fruits, such as to increase prayers and devotion to God, Mary, and the saints?
I think it is important to note that in all Marian apparitions that are ultimately approved, Mary never undermined Church authority and always told visionaries to obey. If there was initial skepticism and resistance, God eventually paved the way. He has a way with His Church.
Never was a true visionary told they did not have to obey Catholic authority. After all, if Jesus died for His Church would He now send his Mother work around it?
We can trust that if God has something to tell us, he’s not going to go outside his Church to get the message to us. It’s not wrong to go to these sites; however, once a local bishop has condemned it, the line has been drawn. If you think you know better than the Church, watch out!
People often experience conversions and even claim miracles at sites that are later condemned. What are we to make of that?
Consider that people pray and love God. God answers prayers. But if we start rejecting the Church and make following a particular apparition or person more important, then we are protestors, rejecting the Church Jesus left for us.
What’s in it for the devil?
I used to wonder what the devil would get out of putting people up to false messages. After all, people come and pray. What does he get out of it?
As I’ve watched the progression of some messages and read up on the topic, I’ve come to understand that the devil has many ploys and false apparitions are just one. He’s not going to get religious people to start listening to heavy metal satanic music.
No, he’s going to have to go in and get them in some religious setting. If he can get them distracted and get them angry with the Church hierarchy, there is the toehold to set them on a bad course.
Consider another story. On my way home from a trip, with my four youngest kids, I detoured into the place when I saw a big sign announcing “Marian Shrine” in Necedah, WI. As soon as I pulled in, I knew something was wrong.
A large building advertised it as work-in-progress, but its rusty beams attested otherwise, and that was the first warning. The place was full of life-sized statues depicting Bible scenes and saints. Its gift store was full of all the usual Catholic items.
I quickly walked around and left. The place felt eerie. I called my husband, Mark, at home and asked him to look up the Shrine in Necedah.
He looked it up and told me that the late self-proclaimed seer Mary Ann Van Hoof reported that she received nine visions between November 2, 1949 and October 7, 1950. On August 15, 1950, 100,000 people attended the vision.
That’s a lot of people and a lot of prayers. But the Church investigated and declared it a fraud. In 1951 John P. Treacy, Bishop of La Crosse, told the Van Hoofs to remove religious artifacts from their farm and stop circulating literature about the apparitions. He issued a statement in 1955, declaring the visions false and prohibited worship associated with them.
Van Hoof and followers refused to obey and disassociated themselves with mainstream Roman Catholicism. Since 1975, they claim to be affiliated with an Old Catholic conservative, independent Catholic group. Yeah, well, for the record, “independent” is synonymous with “not”.
In the end, I’ve learned to stay away from unapproved messages. For the most part, people who go are motivated by their love of God and their desire to experience Him to a greater degree in their lives. Those in love with God naturally crave closeness to him. To think that messages are being sent by Him or the Blessed Mother enamors them with the notion that they can get even closer by taking the messages to heart, visiting the shrines and getting near the visionaries. It is really the same motivation for those that visit approved Shrines.
Being part of a sea of people, all praying the rosary, and loving God and his mother is uplifting. But there is a dark side to participating in messages that Church authority warns against. It can get the faithful off track. Once they are off course, the messages can take over and Catholic priests and bishops are often even be seen as the enemy for rejecting or ignoring the messages. If the time comes when people realize the messages are false, there is a risk that they will feel duped by religion and turn away entirely.
In the end, we have all we need right at home. At Holy Love Ministries, it is reported that Jesus sometimes comes with Mary during her apparitions. Every Catholic already can be in the presence of God before the tabernacles at their church and even receive Him in Holy Communion.
I would have loved to witness something like the pilgrims at Fatima did, but really, I do not need it. The best way to act radically for Christ is to receive Him every day at Mass and then to live His Gospel message.
Copyright © 2013, Patti Maguire Armstrong
Patti Maguire Armstrong
Patti Maguire Armstrong and her husband have ten children. She currently works as a communications specialist with Teresa Tomeo Communications and worked in the fields of social work and public administration before staying home. Patti is an award-winning writer, speaker and was managing editor and co-author of Ascension Press’s Amazing Grace Series. She has appeared on EWTN, and Catholic TV as well as radio stations across the country. Her latest books, Big Hearted: Inspiring Stories from Everyday Families (Scepter Publishers) and Dear God I Don’t Get It (for children from Liguori Publications), will be released in Spring 2013. To read more visit Patti’s blog and website. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook at her author page.
2 responses to “What About Those Apparitions?”
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Thank you for this article Patti. I chased links to go back to your first article, then another, etc. I had no knowledge of your years-back connections with Holy Love Ministries. In my own faith journey, two young women presented themselves outside our AZ parish some years ago. They were traveling to OH and were members of Holy Love. At that time, I knew nothing of that organization. The young women came to the house, had some food/tea and I interviewed them. One was an MD who had her life turned around from being involved in prescribing contraceptives and abortion to becoming very pro-life. Long story short, we put them on our podcast and I did an article or two about Holy Love. Through someone or somehow I came to awareness of the problems with this organization and the diocese. Eventually I cancelled the podcast and won’t do anything to promote/enhance Holy Love. As I stand back from all this, and considering your wise counsel, Patti, I believe the old teaching that God can and does draw good out of evil and pride and ignorance and etc. As in the case of the young woman doctor I mentioned. I believe she’s since left Holy Love. Discernment is best practiced through devotion to the Eucharist, Reconciliation, Adoration, and perhaps a good spiritual advisor… an advisor who is firmly in Holy Mother Church… not in a 100 acre plot of Holy Love.
Thanks, deacontom, for your sharing your own experience. Whenever I begin reading any reaction from one of my articles on Holy Love, I always brace myself. Often, it is an angry warning that I will have to pay for interfering with God’s work. A few times over the years, I’ve gone back and forth with people who seem to be very devout Catholics. I’ve appealed to their sense of Catholicism and Church authority. Each time, the wall of deceit has been impossible to knock down. It becomes the message, the message, the message, and nothing else seems to matter. Such followers always end up turning on the Church for not approving the message. The devil is clever and fools many people with the trappings of faith. Praise God for His Church. We need not make such important spiritual discernments on our own. God bless you!