I think I was contacted by a moderator, so it looks like a limited discussion is okay, so long as its only about the book. At least, that’s what I gleaned from the private message I received.
I understand that a lot [if not most] of the Medjugorje * messages aren’t good and show these apparitions to be frauds, but what do we do with the good messages? Like the evils of divorce messages–which are something a lot of women would be nicely educated by if they had read them. Or are they rendered void by the bad messages?*## Even in the case of “approved” apparitions - the Church never positively approves them, but instead says they can be safely believed; a somewhat different matter - even in those cases, only the recipients of them have any kind of moral obligation to believe them. And there is no need to assume that the recipient’s account is a totally pure, unmediated, “transcript” of the message; it suffices that St.Bernardette (say) got the gist of the “Lady’s” messages correct.
This is even more the case (if possible) with unapproved or doubtful apparitions. Veronica Leuken may have received some genuine messages - but there is no sure way of being sure, & many counter-indications which suggest that her messages are not supernatural: so the allegedly supernatural status of the Bayside apparitions has been explicitly rejected: so, as a matter of practice, they cannot safely be accepted by us as being supernatural.
Messages which are not supernatural, or only doubtfully so, must be judged by what is already known to be certainly true. If there is anything in doubtful apparitions which can be known to be certainly true, that may be useful - but it can be found in what is already known, so at most it confirms what is known already. IMHO, it was a mistake to relax the pre-1969 discipline regarding the speading of alleged private revelations.
Messages which attack the Church, the Papacy, a liturgical rite or practice approved or permitted by the Papacy, any item of Catholic teaching, the status of a Council, or any other such thing, are self-condemned as false, & should be shunned like the plague. This is especially true of the lying visions which call the legitimacy of the Second Vatican Council, the reformed Missal of Paul VI, or the validity of any of the Popes since & including Leo XIII, into question. To do so is gravely erroneous, since these matters are all guaranteed to be legitimate by their status as dogmatic facts - that is, facts which have to be valid for dogmas such as the visibility & perpetuity of the Church to be realities. A message or apparition denying that Paul VI & his successors are legitimate Popes, & that their acts in regulating the worship of the Universal Church were & are legitimate, is therefore gravely erroneous.
Apparitions & messages cannot take the place of, or have the same status as, Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition (in the sense in which the teaching Church understands them); they are not a “third testament”: and it is very unhealthy to base one’s spiritual life upon them; for that is a weight of confidence they cannot bear.
The same applies to prophecies of disasters, of the end of the world or the date of this, or of the birth or rising of Antichrist, & so forth.
