So you appeal to “the Vatican” when you think it supports your skepticism — but at the same time you’ve said you’re skeptical of approved apparitions like Fatima, La Salette, and Akita. In other words, you invoke the Church’s authority only when you believe it agrees with you, and you set it aside when it doesn’t. And in this case, the Vatican has never said the Medjugorje messages “sound human” or are likely not supernatural; that’s your interpretation, not Rome’s.
Furthermore, what you’re calling “skepticism” isn’t skepticism at all — it’s making universal claims without a principle, rejecting approved apparitions without criteria, and appealing to the Church only when you think it agrees with you. Real skepticism requires a consistent standard, and you’ve said you have none.
Yes, I agree — the Church does not require belief in any apparition or private revelation. But the fact that belief is not obligatory does not supply a criterion for judging authenticity, nor does it justify calling an apparition “untrue” or its messages “false prophecies.” And Medjugorje is not “unapproved” in the sense of being rejected; its status is non constat de supernaturalitate (“not yet established as supernatural”), not constat de non supernaturalitate (“established as not of supernatural origin”), nor constat de supernaturalitate (it is established that the phenomenon is of supernatural origin”).
Yes, we agree — and that was precisely my point.
I clarified that because you had framed my position as though I were treating private revelation as doctrinal or as imposing “special promises.” I wasn’t.
Thanks for the clarification — but this is exactly why I asked for precision. Earlier you said that Christ speaks today only to help us grow in faith, hope, and love, and not to reveal concrete details, secrets, or specific content. That is why I responded the way I did: because that statement does place a theological limit on how Christ speaks today.
And the question isn’t whether the biblical revelations were authentic; we both agree they were. My point was that Scripture shows God revealing concrete details, not only vague interior impressions. So the real issue was this: if Scripture shows God giving concrete revelations, what theological basis leads you to conclude that He would now limit Himself only to interior impressions? That’s the part of my paragraph I was asking you to address.
You walked back the specific claims, but not the principle behind them. Because after conceding that you had “assumed too much,” you continued to apply the very same universal rule about what Mary “would never” do — just in new forms.
For example, after your concession, you wrote:
Mary would not be planning her own birthday celebration… She would point us to her Son.
some of the [Medjugorje] messages sound like they are of a human source and not of supernatural source
Mary, like Jesus, is concerned about heavenly things… so when individuals claim Jesus or Mary is revealing things about worldly things, my default is to assume these claims are influenced by human nature.
And earlier — before your concession — you had said:
Mary would never comment on Church politics.
Mary would never refer to her messages.
And this pattern actually began even earlier, when you wrote:
Many have come to Christ at this place, so even if untrue, it has become a holy place, in spite of false prophecies that had taken place there [Medjugorje] (in my opinion).
Side note: That is contradicted by your latest claim:
I would never make the claim that an apparition is not true.
If you cannot claim an apparition is untrue, then you also cannot claim its messages are “false prophecies.”
Those two statements contradict each other.
But again, you never identified which prophecies you believe were false, what principle you used to judge them, or how you distinguish them from approved apparitions that contain similar elements. That shows the same underlying assumption was already operating even before you conceded it was an over‑assumption. You were already making authenticity judgments without a theological or historical principle to ground them.
So even though you said the original claim was an over‑assumption, you continued to rely on the same underlying assumption:
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that Mary would never speak about certain topics
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that Mary would never give certain kinds of instructions
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that Mary would never say anything that sounds “worldly”
That’s the issue: you walked back the wording, but not the principle.
If you truly withdrew the claim that “Mary would never say X,” then the next step would be to withdraw the criterion that depends on that assumption. But instead, the same universal rule keeps reappearing in different forms.
And this ties directly to your later statement:
I have no theological principles other than Scripture warning against false prophets. I have not historical principles other than examples of many false prophets who have duped or deceived the faithful.
Scripture’s warning and the existence of past deceptions are cautions, not criteria.
They don’t tell us what Mary would or wouldn’t say, and they don’t distinguish authentic messages from inauthentic ones.
So if you now say you have “no theological and no historical principles,” that actually contradicts the criterion you continue to apply. A criterion is a principle. You can’t claim to have a criterion if you also claim to have no principle. If you truly have no principle, then the criterion cannot function as one, and you have no basis for making universal claims about what Mary “would never” do or for judging apparitions on that basis. And if you do have a principle, then I’m asking you to name it and explain how it avoids excluding approved apparitions that contain the same elements.
Additionally, you say:
I try to make a point of answering others’ questions.
It’s worth noting that it was only after I asked you the concrete questions that would require an actual principle—questions like:
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Which specific Medjugorje messages fail to point to Christ?
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What theological or historical basis tells you Mary would never give secrets or comment on Church affairs?
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Which specific messages actually sound like something Mary “would never say”?, and thus,
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What principle distinguishes them from approved apparitions that contain the same elements?
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And what theological basis leads you to claim that Christ speaks today only in interior impressions and never in concrete ways, when Scripture itself shows otherwise?
—that you then said you have “no theological and no historical principles.”
That sequence matters.
Because these are precisely the kinds of questions that cannot be answered without a principle. And when pressed to answer them, you responded by saying you have none.
Which means:
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you cannot identify a message that fails your criterion
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you cannot explain why Mary “would never” say certain things
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you cannot distinguish Medjugorje from approved apparitions
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you cannot justify your universal claims about Mary or Jesus
In other words:
the moment the conversation required an actual principle, you acknowledged you don’t have one.
And that’s exactly why the criterion you keep appealing to cannot function as a criterion at all.
But perhaps you can at least finally answer these:
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You quoted only the first sentence of what I wrote (“It’s true that there were two major inquiries, but neither concluded that Medjugorje was a false apparition.”), but the rest of the paragraph is the part that actually addresses your claim. The Yugoslav bishops’ non constat judgment, the Ruini Commission’s positive vote on the first seven apparitions, and the absence of any negative conclusion all directly contradict the idea that the Church reduced the options to hallucination or fabrication. Could you respond to the full argument rather than just the opening sentence?
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You acknowledged that Scripture’s silence does not prove non‑occurrence. Given that concession, what is the basis for your earlier universal claim that Jesus “wrote nothing down other than in the sand”?
You have speculated — and more than that, you’ve made a series of universal claims: what Mary “would never” say or do, what Jesus “does not” reveal today, and even what He “never” did. I haven’t speculated about what Mary or Jesus would or wouldn’t say or do; I’ve only asked you to name the principle behind your universal assertions. And the moment the conversation required an actual principle, you said you don’t have one. Without a principle, those universal claims — about Mary’s speech, Jesus’s manner of revelation, or Their actions — cannot function as criteria at all.
So at this point, the issue isn’t speculation. It’s simply that your universal claims require a principle you’ve said you don’t have. Until that principle is named, the claims can’t function as a basis for evaluating any apparition.