Apparitions and Mystical Phenomena: January 2012 Archives

Just when one kerfuffle over the automatic-writing mystic Vassula Ryden is announced, along comes another.

Now the Orthodox Church of Cyprus issued a statement about her on January 13. The Synodical Committee for Matters of Heresy --

By the way, isn't that a great name? Sure, we have a Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is a nice, positive-sounding name, but some issues really deserve a statement coming from an organization that gets right to the point. This is about identifying, defining, combating and routing heresy. I'll send a little note to Levada and see if he-- well, I'll do that later.

The Synodical Committee for Matters of Heresy warned:

In reality, her teachings are heretical, and her claims that she communicates directly with Christ are fantastical and outside of the spirit of the experience of the our Church.

So how many Orthodox Churches have issued warnings against her: Greece? Cyprus? The Patriarchate of Constantinople? Does she plan to stop in at church offices to collect the condemnations on her tour?

There are probably more to come!

What do false mystics do, besides peddle spiritual messages and collect money from naive followers? They sue people who try to expose them.

Last March the Patriarchate of Constantinople warned against Vassula Ryden's claims of presenting messages from Jesus. It was an impressive statement from her own church (English translation here), which should help to diminish the bad influence of this long-exposed phony, especially when it is added to the warnings from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1995, 1996, and 2007.

In March 2011 the critical web site infovassula.ch, based in Switzerland, wrote, apparently incorrectly, that the document was a formal excommunication of Ryden, and in November 2011 Vassula's organization sued the site author, Maria Laura Pio. A hearing about some issues was held on January 6.

The impression of an excommunication is understandable, since the Patriarchate's document stated:

we call upon the proponents of these unacceptable innovations and the supporters who maintain them, who henceforth are not admitted to ecclesiastical communion, not only to not be involved in the pastoral work of the local Holy Metropolis, but also to not preach their novel teachings, to prevent the appropriate sanctions under the Holy Canons.

Of course we are dealing with translations, so ambiguities are possible. It sounds at least as if the followers of Vassula are to be denied Holy Communion until they desist.

I wish Ms. Pio all the best in dealing with this legal harassment from the Vassula camp.

A 2011 book by four pro-Medjugorje journalists accused the late Bishop Pavao Zanic of collaborating with the Communists in Yugoslavia against the claimed apparition: an outrageous charge.

The current bishop reviews the accusation and points out that Zanic's position on the case was consistently the exact opposite of the Communists' position. When he was favorable, they were against; when he was against, they were favorable! So they weren't very good at getting him to collaborate, hm?

Tsk, tsk, these Communists were so incompetent!

(Note: the English version published on the Mostar diocesan web site is my translation.)