Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, the “Supernatural,” and What it Means for UFOlogy (Part 1)

Daniel Maria Klimek, Medjugorje and the Supernatural: Science, Mysticism, and Extraordinary Religious Experience.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

OK, here’s the problem:

On June 24, 1981—the anniversary of the 1947 sighting by Kenneth Arnold that kicked off the modern UFO era, if that means anything—a group of Croatian teenagers and a ten-year-old boy in the mountain village of Medjugorje, in what was then Yugoslavia, began to experience visions of the Virgin Mary.  The boy and five of the teenagers continued to have daily visions of the Lady for years to come.  Apparently the visions have kept on until the present, though not with all the original group of seers.

Shades of Lourdes in 1858, Fátima in 1917.  There, too, the Lady revealed Herself to youthful seers, transforming them into celebrities.  But at Lourdes and Fátima the scientific equipment didn’t exist to get inside the visionaries’ brains and see what was going on while they experienced their revelations.  By the 1980s the technology was in place, and the regularity of the visions–day after day, year in and year out, always at about the same time in the late afternoon–meant that they could be put, as it were, under the critical microscope.

What the scientists found, according to Daniel Klimek’s new book on Medjugorje, left them baffled and confused.  As well they might have been.

The experiencers were tested by a French scientific team in 1984, by an Italian team in 1985, by a joint team of Italians and Austrians in 1998.  What the investigators did not find: the “usual suspects,” the standard options for explaining the visionary experiences of medieval mystics.  “It is impossible to ascertain in the vast majority of cases,” wrote the neurologist Oliver Sacks, “whether the experience represents a hysterical or psychotic ecstasy, the effects of intoxication or an epileptic or migrainous manifestation.”  At Medjugorje the answer in this multiple-choice turned out to be, none of the above.

The investigators were struck by the utter normalcy of the young visionaries.  No hysteria, psychosis, or epilepsy, not to mention intoxication.  The kids were “like any other youngsters of their age … calm, serene and deeply serious and did not play at being celebrities.”  No evidence of collusion among them.  Yet during their trances they all stared in unison at the same spot above their heads–where no one but they saw anything at all.

And lowered their eyes in unison as the Blessed Virgin made Her departure.

(Relevant to the problem of multiply witnessed UFO sightings?  I think so.)

The seers weren’t in a dream state.  This was determined by electroencephalogram (EEG) testing: the ratio of alpha to beta impulses, while they were having their experiences, suggested they were not merely awake, but in a mode of hyper-awakeness.  Yet, strangely, while in their visionary state they didn’t blink–not even once.  Shining bright lights in their faces provoked no reaction.  They were similarly impervious to sound and pain.

“When a heated silver disc was applied to Marija and two of the other visionaries before ecstasy, they reacted within three or four tenths of a second–in other words, normally.  During ecstasy, however, they did not react at all.  The test was limited to seven seconds, for fear of inflicting serious injuries if the period was extended.  During that time, the visionaries appeared to be completely insensitive to pain.”

This would seem to rule out any possibility of fraud.

The seers’ lips moved as they talked with the Virgin.  Their voices were silent.  “As the apparition begins, first the visionaries become silent without even a split second of distinction.  Curiously, the ‘visionaries themselves have admitted to hearing their own voice of verbal communication as normal during the apparitional experience and are surprised that others cannot hear them.'”  Only in the middle of the vision, reciting Our-Father-Who-Art-In-Heaven as the Virgin instructed them, did their voices briefly become audible once more.

The phenomena, thought the Italian investigator Dr. Luigi Frigerio, were so puzzling as to suggest they couldn’t “be explained naturally, and thus can be only preternatural or supernatural.”  Extraordinary, indeed.

Too extraordinary, perhaps, to be believed?

Here I must admit my own inadequacy.  The account of Medjugorje I’ve just given is taken from Klimek’s book.  I have no independent knowledge of it; I’d never even heard of the place before my friend Jeff Kripal referred me to Medjugorje and the Supernatural.  So am I revealing my gullibility, that I’ve swallowed a story spun by a biased Catholic apologist?

Here’s how Klimek describes himself on his website:

“Br. Daniel Maria Klimek, T.O.R., is a Franciscan friar and an Assistant Professor in the theology department at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is a member of the theological commission of the International Marian Association, and has taught as a Lecturer in the School of Franciscan Studies at St. Bonaventure University. He received his Ph.D. in spirituality with distinction from the Catholic University of America, and a Master of Divinity and a Master of Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, and a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School.”

Can such a man be trusted to give a balanced and accurate account of events that touch so deeply on his personal faith?  If you say no, look in the mirror and tell yourself you don’t have a few prejudices of your own.

The book, I should add, was published by the unimpeachable Oxford University Press.  According to Klimek, it’s been nominated for the 2018 Distinguished Book Award of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

What do we know about the scientific investigators Klimek cites?  The case for something extraordinary going on at Medjugorje rests on their honesty and competence, and if Dr. Luigi Frigerio was at all typical, at least some of them had an ax to grind in favor of the supernatural.  Which is not the same thing as being dishonest or incompetent; and I wonder if any skeptics have subjected their findings to a fact-based critique.  (The 2002 article on Medjugorje in Skeptical Inquirer simply ignores them.)

At least one of the scientists who visited Medjugorje, according to Klimek–dependent here, as for much of his information, on Randall Sullivan’s 2004 book The Miracle Detective–came to debunk and stayed to be converted.  This was Dr. Marco Margnelli, neurophysicist and “ardent atheist” from Milan.  What he saw in Medjugorje impressed him so much he became a practicing Catholic.

Especially this:

“Before the apparitions of the visionaries would begin in the church rectory, where they met in those days to experience their daily apparitions, there were hundreds of birds outside in the trees, chirping and cooing, being incredibly–at times, deafeningly–loud.  Until the exact moment that the apparitions began, that is: the second the visionaries dropped to their knees and went into ecstasy, the moment that it is believed they encounter the Virgin Mary, every bird outside would go completely silent.”

It’s like what UFOlogists call the “Oz factor”: that the UFO’s appearance is accompanied by the environment turning strange.  A busy street, for example, inexplicably emptied of traffic.

But I wonder: did anyone except Dr. Margnelli notice “the silence of the birds,” as Klimek calls it?  What about those French, Italian, Austrian scientific teams?  Did the birds suddenly go silent at the beginning of the visionary trances, day after day, without anybody but Dr. Margnelli taking note?  Apparently no one else spoke of it; otherwise Klimek would surely have mentioned that.  How could that be–if it really happened?

And if it didn’t happen, why did Dr. Margnelli imagine it?

Klimek leaves these questions unasked.  It’s a flaw in his treatment of the difficult and intriguing problem to which his book is devoted, that it doesn’t occur to him to ask them.

There are other flaws as well in Medjugorje and the Supernatural.  I came away persuaded that something beyond the explanatory power of contemporary science may very well be involved in the happenings in that once-obscure village.  But the inferences Klimek draws, of an irruption of supernatural power into late twentieth-century Bosnia-Herzegovina, don’t sit well with me.

And what does he mean by “supernatural,” anyway?

(To be continued.)

by David Halperin
Learn more about David Halperin on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidjhalperin
Connect to Journal of a UFO Investigator on  Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/JournalofaUFOInvestigator
and Find David Halperin on Google+
Read about my book Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO–coming in 2020 from Stanford University Press.
Don’t have time to keep checking my blog?  Sign up for my monthly email newsletter, with summaries and links to the past month’s posts, plus oldies-but-goodies from the archive.