The thought had crossed my mind

A reader writes concerning the defrocked Fr. Vlasic’s pickle (ducking):

This guy’s like Maciel — they were weeds that grew during the springtime of evangelization. For how long God will continue to bring good from evil through the LC and allow Medjugorje is anybody’s guess. I’m sure He drew some good from the medieval flagellants and Savonarola’s tirades.

Yeah, the guy does sound uncommonly like Fr. Maciel in some ways. This is why I’m not too moved by the “Good things came from Medjugorje, so it must be a real apparition” logic. Good things came from the sincere faith and good intentions of the Legionaries who were snookered by Fr. Maciel too. God writes straight with crooked lines and brings goodness out of evil.

No, I’m not calling Medjugorje evil. I’m saying that the argument from results is a weak one. As I told a reader yesterday, I dislike trying to second guess the Spirit. There’s still a(n astronomically unlikely) chance that Rome will, after all this, suddenly be moved by the Spirit to declare the alleged apparitions there authentic. The Pope has, once upon a time, declared the condemned witch Joan of Arc a saint after all. Should that happen, I will add Medjugorje to the list of approved apparitions.

But do I think that’s actually going to happen. No. I think the dodgy business will trail on for a while. I think well-meaning folk will derive some benefit from whatever it is they think God is saying to them through this false apparition and that God will meet them at their growing edge and speak since they are honestly trying to listen and may be completely unaware of the dodginess of Medugorje. In short, I think God is not proud and doesn’t wait around till we have perfect understanding before entering our lives in relationship.

The thing I fear is that, should the whole dodgy business be definitively condemned, Medjugorje enthusiasts will, like Legionaries, be thrown into a crisis of faith and toss the baby of the Faith out with the bathwater of the false apparition.

So far, the betrayed Legionaries who have been scandalized by Maciel’s scam have not, so far as I can tell, bagged the Catholic faith. But there’s always that risk when you’ve invested a lot of personal energy in a particular movement in the Church. So I worry.