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Medjugorje and the Supernatural

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Medjugorje and
the Supernatural
Science, Mysticism, and
Extraordinary Religious Experience

z
DANIEL MARIA KLIMEK

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1
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Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity

—​S imone Weil
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Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: The Silence of the Birds 1

1. The Young Woman on the Hill 12
The Messages of Medjugorje 19
Visions of the Afterlife 23
Near-​Death Experiences: A Comparative Study 28
More Questions on the Afterlife: Deceased Persons
and Reincarnation 38
The Question of Other Religions 39
Secrets of Medjugorje 41
2. Public Revelation and Private Revelation: How the Catholic
Church Discerns the Supernatural 45
Private Revelations and the Development of Doctrine 48
Official Norms for Evaluating Apparitions or Revelations 52
First Criterion of Discernment: The Visionary 54
Second Criterion of Discernment: The Theological Content of
the Revelation 55
Third Criterion of Discernment: Spiritual Fruit and Healthy
Devotion 61
Testing the Religious Ecstasy 62
Intervention of Competent Church Authorities 62
Medjugorje and the Church 63
3. Mysticism in the Twentieth Century 71
William James and the Study of Mysticism 72
James’s Four Marks of the Mystical State 74
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viii Contents

A Pragmatist’s Approach: Discerning the Fruits

of Experience 75
Respecting the “More” of Religious Experiences 78
Challenging the Limitations of Rationalism 79
The Authority of Mystical Experiences 82
Evelyn Underhill and Mysticism 82
Underhill’s Defining Marks of Mysticism 87
Categories of Visions (Visionary Phenomena) 94
Corporal Visions 95
Imaginative Visions 95
Intellectual Visions 96
Passive Imaginary Visions 96
Symbolic Passive Imaginary Visions 97
Personal Passive Imaginary Visions 97
Active Imaginary Visions 98
Active Intellectual Visions 100
Categories of Voices/​Locutions 100
Intellectual Locutions 101
Imaginative Locutions 102
Exterior Locutions 102
Mystical Experiences and Visionary Experiences: Understanding
the Nuances 102
Critiques of James and Underhill 106
Critiquing James: Hermeneutical Fallacies 106
Critiquing Underhill: Hermeneutical Reductionism 110
The Case of Maria Valtorta 113
The Case of Therese Neumann 114
Underhill’s Reductionism 114
A Holistic Approach: The Case of Gemma Galgani 118
4. The Great Debate 121
Perennialism 122
The Perennial Invariant 123
The Perennial Variant 124
The Typological Variant 124
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Contents ix

Constructivism 125
Complete Constructivism 127
Incomplete Constructivism 128
Catalytic Constructivism 129
Developments in the Debate: The Pure Conscious Experience and
the New Perennialism 131
The Epistemological Question: A Kantian Hermeneutic or a
“Kantian” Misreading of Kant? 134
The Bigger Picture 143
An Attributional Approach 147
Religious Experience and Reductionism 159
Neurological/​Psychiatric Reductionism 160
Psychoanalytical Reductionism 163
Secular-​Sociological Reductionism 166
Moving Toward Neuroscience and New Methodology 168
5. Medical and Scientific Studies on the Apparitions
in Medjugorje 171
Scientific Teams Investigate 172
Behavioral and Psychological Studies 172
Neuroscientific Studies 178
The Question of Hypnosis and Self-​Suggestion 179
Studies on Ocular and Visual Functions 181
Studies on Auditory and Voice Functions, and Sensitivity
to Pain 183
Subjective or Objective Experiences? 186
The Results 189
6. Medjugorje’s Uniqueness: A Different Case Study for
Neuroscience 194
Contribution to Discourses on Religious Experience 198
Epileptic-​Seizure Interpretations 199
Interpretations of Hysteria 201
Interpretations of Hallucination 206
Methodological Considerations 208
Interpretations of Freud 212
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x Contents

7. Learning from Shortcomings, Moving Forward

with New Methods 218
Epistemological and Hermeneutical Considerations 219
Deconstructing Taves’s Naturalistic Approach: Important
Implications 221
The Myth of Secular Neutrality? 235
Escaping an Ontological Prison: Beyond the Dogma of
Metaphysical Naturalism 238
Components of a Different Method 252
An Inductive Constructive-​Relational Approach 254
Etic and Emic Perspectives 258
Criteria of Adequacy 260
The Constructive-​Relational Approach in Medjugorje 263
Conclusion: Contributions to the “Eternal Battle-​Ground” 265
Significance of the Medjugorje Studies 271
Epistemological Contributions to Studying Religious
Experiences 272
Hermeneutical Contributions to Studying Religious
Experiences 273
Contributions to the Criteria of Adequacy 277
Ontological Contributions to Studying Religious
Experiences 278
Reconciling Religion and Science 279

Notes 281
Bibliography 341
Index 355
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Acknowledgments

I am incredibly grateful to Cynthia Read at Oxford University Press for

supporting this book and for all the hard work that she and her staff put
into its production. A much earlier draft of the book began as my doctoral
dissertation. I would like to thank the Rev. Dr. Raymond Studzinski, O.S.B.,
my dissertation director, for guiding the original work with patience, ear-
nestness, and great insight. Thank you also to Dr. William Dinges, the Rev.
Msgr. Stephen Rossetti, the Rev. Dr. John P. Beal, and Dr. Kurt Martens
for their interest in my work and for their helpful advice. Thank you to my
religious community, the Franciscan Friars of the Third Order Regular of
the Province of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, for all the friars who have
supported and encouraged me in this work. I would particularly like to
thank Br. Gabriel Mary Amato, T.O.R., who provided the time, support
(and coffee!) that I needed to finish the very first draft during my postulant
year with the friars. Thank you to the Rev. Thomas Acklin, O.S.B., Ph.D.,
for wisdom and life-​transforming guidance in both my spiritual and aca-
demic life. I am grateful to Br. Marius Strom, T.O.R., for assistance in
helping me with technical matters. I wish to acknowledge gratitude for
my family, especially for my mother Janina, my father Szymon, and my
brother Konrad, for loving support.
Researching and writing about Medjugorje one enters a world of
authors, journalists, bloggers, filmmakers, pilgrimage and conference
organizers, all dedicated to the topic. To all the friends, colleagues, and
interlocutors with whom I have had the pleasure, these past years, of dis-
cussing the topic of Medjugorje, with great gratitude and love, I thank you.
To the memories of Fr. Sean Sullivan, T.O.R., and Fr. Michael Scanlan,
T.O.R., I dedicate this book.
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Medjugorje and the Supernatural

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Introduction
The Silence of the Birds

It sounds like something out of C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien, mas-

ter storytelling at the grandest level. And yet it is not a fairy tale. It is not
Narnia, nor Middle-​earth, but an actual place: a mysterious, Slavic village
hidden in between the mountains of Central Europe where miraculous
and supernatural things are said to happen. A village where children expe-
rience the supernatural on a daily basis, not through their imaginations
but—​they claim—​through direct divine intervention; a village where a
heavenly visitor brings messages from another realm—​messages from
above, messages that answer some of life’s greatest questions: What is the
meaning of life? What happens when a person dies? Does God exist? Is
there an afterlife? What happens to people of different religions? Is salva-
tion open to all?
It is a village of visionaries, apparitions, weeping statues, dancing suns,
rosaries mysteriously turned gold; a village, in a time when secularism
permeates much of the Western world, where religious and priestly voca-
tions flourish; a village where lives are transformed, where healings and
miracles are said to happen, where millions of pilgrims have traveled from
all corners of the earth, hoping to encounter a touch of the divine in a place
where, it is said, heaven meets earth.
The village is called Medjugorje, located in Bosnia-​Herzegovina, in the
former Yugoslavia. The greatest claim connected to Medjugorje, one that
is at the center of the events there and from which everything else stems,
is that the Virgin Mary began visiting Medjugorje in 1981 and has, through
her chosen visionaries, returned every day since for over thirty-​five years
now, communicating important messages to the world. It is a bold and
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2 introduction

monumental claim. It began with six Croatian youngsters—​five teenagers

and a ten-​year-​old child—​all reporting to experience daily visitations from
the Virgin Mary. Three of the six seers claim to continue to experience
daily apparitions of the Mother of Jesus over thirty years later, as adults.
The reputation of Medjugorje has transcended popular piety or geo-
graphical boundaries and has reached the West, even touching popular and
elite culture. National Geographic dedicated the cover story of its December
2015 issue, titled “Mary: The Most Powerful Woman in the World,” to the
topic of Marian apparitions and devotion, featuring Medjugorje promi-
nently. The late U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia once men-
tioned Medjugorje in a speech he gave to the Catholic legal society, the St.
Thomas More Society, while being honored with the Man for All Seasons
Award. The popular late-​ night comedian Stephen Colbert mentioned
Medjugorje while discussing his Catholic faith, and specifically the topic
of Marian apparitions, with the actress Patricia Heaton, a fellow Catholic,
on the Late Show. Hollywood actor Martin Sheen, known for many impor-
tant film roles and for playing the president of the United States on the tel-
evision series The West Wing, has not only traveled to Medjugorje but has
also played the role of Father Jozo Zovko, the Croatian Franciscan priest
who was pastor of the parish at Medjugorje when supernatural events in
the village were reported to begin in 1981. Similarly, Jim Caviezel, chosen
by Mel Gibson to play the role of Jesus Christ in the 2004 epic film The
Passion of the Christ, has made pilgrimages to Medjugorje and has claimed
that without the significance of Medjugorje in his life he would never have
been able to portray Jesus. Loretta Young, the glamorous starlet of both tel-
evision and film in the 1950s and ’60s, traveled to Medjugorje as a pilgrim
in the ’80s and explained, in an authorized biography, that Medjugorje
gave her life meaning.1
What is it about this village that is so special, that has attracted so much
attention? And, can the supernatural events associated with Medjugorje be
taken seriously? Pope John Paul II, himself a believer in the apparitions
of Medjugorje, once articulated what he believed to be at the center of its
appeal, explaining: “Today’s world has lost its sense of the supernatural,
but many are searching for it—​and find it in Medjugorje, through prayer,
penance, and fasting.”2 As the events in Medjugorje unfolded, other mys-
terious happenings, alleging a supernatural origin, became associated
with the site.
In 1994, Don Pablo Martin, a Spanish priest, was the parish priest of
Saint Agostino’s Church in the Pantano district of Civitavecchia in Italy.
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Introduction 3

Don Pablo, making a pilgrimage to Medjugorje in September of that

year, bought a sixteen-​inch, white plaster statue of the Virgin Mary as a
souvenir from the village. The statue would one day gain international
attention and be recognized under the name La Madonnina, meaning
“Little Madonna.” In his spiritual life, Don Pablo had a strong devotion
to the renowned Capuchin friar and priest Padre Pio (1887–​1968), the
Italian mystic who was famous for the stigmata, purportedly supernatural
wounds corresponding to the crucifixion marks of Jesus’s body. In Padre
Pio’s case, the stigmata wounds appeared on his hands, feet, and side.
Pope John Paul II would canonize the Italian stigmatic in 2002 as a saint.
This devotion is noteworthy because Don Pablo credits Padre Pio’s inter-
cession with helping him select that statue from Medjugorje. It was Padre
Pio who assured him, according to Don Pablo, that “the most beautiful
event of his life” would result for selecting that statue.3 How exactly Padre
Pio did this Don Pablo did not specify, though it can be assumed that Don
Pablo was referring to spiritual discernment through prayer, as Padre Pio
had been dead since 1968; and as it is the practice of many Catholics to
pray for the intercession and guidance of the saints. It merits attention
that even when Padre Pio walked the earth and greeted pilgrims in his fri-
ary, in San Giovanni Rotondo, he made what is believed to be a prophecy
about the coming of the apparitions in Medjugorje. Mary Craig reports
that a few years before the apparitions began, Padre Pio had told a group
of pilgrims from the diocese of Mostar, “The Blessed Virgin Mary will soon
be visiting your homeland.”4 The parish of Medjugorje exists within the
Mostar diocese.
Don Pablo decided to give the statue of the Madonna as a gift to a partic-
ularly devout parishioner in his church, Fabio Gregori. Gregori was a fam-
ily man who was an electrician by trade. It was on the evening of February
2, 1995, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, that Gregori—​
planning to attend the rosary service at Saint Agostino’s Parish—​was told
by his alarmed, six-​year-​old daughter that the statue of the Madonna was
crying in their home. Coming up to the statue to see for himself, Gregori
saw red streaks on the Madonna’s cheeks, and he reached out to touch the
flowing substance with the tip of his finger. He described in that moment
“a great blast of fire” surging through his body as he touched the red
substance.5
Many more people would also witness seeing this phenomenon—​
the weeping statue—​in the following weeks, including then bishop of
Civitavecchia, Gerolmo Grillo, who initially declared his skepticism
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4 introduction

about the claims. The bishop remained skeptical until the statue of the
Madonna cried a tear of blood in front of him, his sister, her husband,
and two religious sisters visiting from Romania. Bishop Grillo appeared
on a national newscast in prime time on April 5, 1995, testifying to this
occurrence, which had transpired three weeks before, on March 15. Before
that moment, not only was he skeptical about the whole situation but he
was also hostile, initially requesting Don Pablo to destroy the statue. The
priest refused to do so. The bishop also reached out to the police to inves-
tigate the Gregori family and sent his own physician to take a sample of
the alleged blood from the statue to test it. The doctor reported back that
the tears did, indeed, constitute blood. Bishop Grillo then took the statue
to Rome for it to be tested by two more, separate teams of physicians. They
also confirmed that the substance from the weeping statue was blood.6
Laboratory tests showed the DNA from the blood to be that of a male in his
mid-​thirties, which eventually led Bishop Grillo and much of the faithful
to the conviction that this statue from Medjugorje was shedding the blood
of Jesus Christ.7
Skeptics took a different perspective on the matter, alleging that the
blood must belong to Fabio Gregori and that this must be nothing more
than an elaborate hoax. Many conspiracy theories began to arise. Giovanni
Panunzio, the head of an Italian group in Sardinia known for exposing
religious frauds, argued that the most likely explanation was a “blood-​filled
syringe, encased in the plaster and attached to a small battery that could
be activated by remote control,” or perhaps, “the culprits had employed
special contact lenses that would expand and release liquid when exposed
to heat.”8 These theories were disproven when separate CAT scans run
on the statue—​at the behest of Italy’s largest consumer protection agency
(Codacons), the public prosecutor’s office, and the Catholic Church—​
showed that the weeping Madonna did not contain any hidden devices,
none being found in the statue.9
The case of the inexplicable weeping statue from Medjugorje acquired
so much attention in the Italian press that, in addition to the Church, state
officials and public agencies also got involved in investigating the matter.
The public prosecutor’s office charged a criminal complaint of pious fraud
against Fabio Gregori, the state attorney’s office even seizing and sealing
up the statue during their investigations. The outcry against these actions
was loud in Italy as protests ensued, people taking to the streets against
the state’s intervention. At the suppression of the statue, the Vatican made
a very public gesture of support for Gregori and the cause of the weeping
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Introduction 5

statue. This came, journalist Randall Sullivan explains, when John Paul II
“dispatched his close friend and fellow countryman Cardinal Andrej Maria
Deskur to Civitavecchia to address Gregori’s congregation at an Easter
Mass, where the cardinal presented Fabio a blessed copy of La Madonnina,
and compared what was taking place to events in Poland during 1967,
when communist authorities had sequestered the revered Madonna of
Czestochowa in Krakow.”10 The allusion to the Polish icon refers to the
most famous image of the Virgin Mary in Polish Catholicism, which was
a national symbol and, for a while, was confiscated by communist officials
as a politically motivated act of suppression.
Though taking many years to be resolved in the courts, on March 20,
2001, Judge Carmine Castalado, who was hearing the pious fraud case
brought against Gregori by the public prosecutor’s office, announced his
ruling on the matter, concluding that there was “no trickery” found by
Gregori or anyone else connected to the statue of the weeping Madonna.11
Indeed, no natural explanation, or one implying fraud, was ever found in
the case of the weeping statue, despite years of investigations performed
by state officials, by a Church commission, and by private and public
groups that hoped to expose the matter as a hoax—​groups who have had
a history of successfully exposing frauds.12 The February 6, 1997, issue of
the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero explained that the opposite of fraud
had been deemed as an explanation for the phenomenon by a panel of
theologians, stating: “A statue of Our Lady of Medjugorje that cried tears
of blood on 14 occasions in early 1995 after being brought from the Marian
Sanctuary of Medjugorje to the Italian port city of Civitavecchia was judged
‘supernatural’ by a panel of Italian theological experts, who had spent
nearly two years studying the controversy.”13 There have, however, been
mixed reactions from Church authorities on the status surrounding the
statue, another theological commission expressing the opinion that super-
natural origins could not be confirmed—​which was not a denial of super-
natural origins but was a recognition that it could not be determined.14
Bishop Grillo’s belief in the supernatural origins of the weeping statue was
announced on April 6, 1995, in the Italian news daily La Stampa, which
reported: “Bishop Grillo has disclosed to the press without any further res-
ervation that the Blessed Virgin Mary’s weeping is a miracle!”15
What was not widely known is that Pope John Paul II, during these
years of controversy surrounding the weeping statue, venerated the Virgin
of Civitavecchia and requested that the statue be brought to the Vatican.
In a recent book on the entire matter titled La Madonnina de Civitavecchia,
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6 introduction

Bishop Grillo revealed these facts, even including as evidence in his book a
letter signed and dated by John Paul II speaking to a meeting between the
two men. It was on June 9, 1995, that John Paul II’s personal secretary and
longtime confidant, Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz, asked Bishop Grillo to
bring the statue of the weeping Madonna to the Vatican.
When the statue was brought to the Vatican, John Paul II venerated the
Madonna, praying before the statue and, after his prayer, placing a crown
on the head of the Virgin—​a crown that the pope himself brought for the
occasion.16 Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged his predecessor’s devotion to
the weeping Virgin Mary. In 2005, Benedict addressed the Italian Bishops’
Conference on the matter, sharing with them that John Paul II had vener-
ated the weeping statue of Mary.17 At the end of this meeting, Benedict
greeted Bishop Grillo with enthusiastic words, declaring that the Madonna
of Civitavecchia will accomplish great things.18
Bishop Grillo was no stranger to the things that were already being
accomplished. The Madonna’s tears did not come in vain, for the phenom-
enon began to be associated with fruits of faith, ranging from conversions
to reported miracles. In February 2005, Bishop Grillo declared that the
shrine in Civitavecchia which was dedicated to the weeping Madonna had
become a center of evangelization. He was especially impressed with the
remarkable transformation that the city of Civitavecchia underwent owing
to the influence of the weeping statute. Before the miracle of the statue
came to the city, Bishop Grillo noted, Civitavecchia “was considered ‘the
Stalingrad of Latium’—​60% communist, an anti-​clerical and anarchic
city.”19 Today, Civitavecchia is a place of pilgrimage and prayer, becoming
a sacred site venerated by millions—​to the point that Italian tourist bro-
chures began referring to the city as “the doorway to Rome.”20 In October
2006, one year after Benedict XVI announced to the Italian Bishops’
Conference that his predecessor venerated the statue of the weeping
Madonna, a very curious occurrence took place, something that had not
happened in years: the statue from Medjugorje began to shed tears again.21
The supernatural is a mysterious realm, one that many believe in and
one whose existence many others doubt. It is a topic, furthermore, that
makes many uncomfortable.
There are those who even feel the need to attempt to disprove any
claims of the supernatural when they are made. Such was the case with
Dr. Marco Margnelli, an Italian neurophysiologist and an ardent atheist
who traveled to numerous locations trying to disprove claims of mystical
phenomena—​he traveled, for example, to San Giovanni Rotondo in 1987,
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Introduction 7

years after the death of the famous friar, to try to disprove the stigmata of
Padre Pio.
A year later, in the summer of 1988, Dr. Margnelli traveled to
Medjugorje, hoping, he admitted, to find “any evidence that would con-
tradict it or expose it as a fake.”22 He would be in a perfect position to
examine the ecstasies of the visionaries during their claimed Marian appa-
ritions, having authored a work on altered states of consciousness, an area
of expertise for Dr. Margnelli.23 Dr. Margnelli conducted an array of medi-
cal tests on the visionaries and gradually came to the conclusion that, dur-
ing their apparitions, the visionaries do in fact enter into a “genuine state
of ecstasy.”24 While acknowledging that as a scientist he could not judge
whether the apparitions are authentic or not, he did admit that “we were
certainly in the presence of an extraordinary phenomenon.”25
Dr. Margnelli was a witness in Medjugorje to a number of events that
baffled his beliefs, one of which included the seemingly miraculous heal-
ing of a woman from leukemia. What moved him most personally, how-
ever, was the behavior of the birds before and during the apparitions.
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.
This was something that stayed with Dr. Margnelli for a long time.
But that absolute silence of the birds not only remained with him, it also
haunted him, he admitted. It was a few months after returning to Milan
from Medjugorje that Dr. Margnelli became a practicing Catholic.

Experiences like the weeping statue from Medjugorje and the silence
of the birds, the latter an occurrence that many pilgrims have reported,
can be identified as “concurring phenomena,” as they are events related to
the primary phenomenon, the alleged Marian apparitions. Such events can
have strong influences on many lives, often inspiring faith and devotion.
As John Paul II reflected, such events represent something deeper for peo-
ple that the modern world cannot offer: an encounter with a higher reality, a
touch of the supernatural. Questions, however, arise. Can the supernatural
be real? Can such occurrences be investigated or authenticated? Can claims
of supernatural experiences be empirically tested by science?
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8 introduction

Like Dr. Margnelli, countless of doctors and scientists from var-

ious countries have traveled to Medjugorje to investigate and study the
apparitions of the visionaries. Throughout the past three decades, the
Medjugorje visionaries have been subjected to an extensive amount of
medical, psychological, and scientific examination, even while experienc-
ing their apparitions. Neuroscience has been used prominently, as electro-
encephalograms (EEG) have been applied on the visionaries to study their
ecstasies, the altered state of consciousness they enter during their appari-
tions, by observing what is happening inside their brains as they undergo
their mystical experiences. Scientists and journalists have noted that this
is the first time in history that visionary experiences have been subjected
to such meticulous and in-​depth study through modern scientific technol-
ogy. The results of these studies do not only shine light on the experiences
of the Medjugorje visionaries but can also make a contribution to under-
standing popular theories about past religious experiences and to debates
surrounding their authenticity.
An academic debate about extraordinary religious experiences has
emerged in recent decades. Two main groups of scholars have been at the
center of this debate. One of these groups, recognized as “constructivists,”
are scholars who have emphasized the role of language, tradition, and cul-
ture in constructing mystical experiences, pointing first and foremost to
human construction in the religious experience.26 This constructivist her-
meneutic challenges the classic interpretation of religious experiences,
known as the “perennialist” perspective. The perennial philosophy has
argued that mystical experiences cannot be reduced to human construc-
tion but, at their core, they share certain characteristics that transcend cul-
ture, language, or time period, pointing to a shared spiritual experience
among devotees that indicates an encounter with something higher: with
the transcendent.
In the 1990s, a new group of scholars, led by Robert K. C. Forman,
renewed the perennialist perspective with a “new perennialism” that pre-
sented a hermeneutical challenge to constructivist scholars. This “new
perennialism” centers on presenting a “pure consciousness” experience,
a documented experience of mystical union that people have reported
whose fundamental tenets question the epistemological assumptions of a
constructivist interpretation.27
Eventually, after twenty years of debate between the two sides, Forman
and co-​author Jensine Andresen published an article calling for scholars
of religion to put down their swords in the “methodological war that has
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Introduction 9

been waging between constructivists and perennialists in the study of reli-

gion.”28 Instead, they recommended that scholars explore new disciplines
of study, particularly research on consciousness, in order to make meth-
odological progress on this subject. Forman and Andresen recommended
exploration into fields like cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology.
They explained:

The study of religion will benefit greatly from a more interdiscipli­

nary consideration of how consciousness and subjective experiences,
including religious ones, may actively influence, and be influenced
by, human physiology. To undergo a vision of any divine form, or
even to believe that we are having such a vision, will no doubt effect
our heart rate, our blood chemistry and pressure, our serotonin lev-
els, etc. It is high time that we studied how, and how much.
It is time for scholars of religion to leap with both feet into the
discussion of consciousness, spirituality, and the role of direct expe-
rience as important and creative elements of human religions. . . .
We must explore the nature of spiritual experiences in more
detail by drawing more guidance from consciousness studies. We
must learn how physiology connects with spiritual experiences by
increasing research on the biology of religious experience. We must
examine the implications of research on the biology of religious
experience for views on the “validity” of those experiences.29

As a response to Forman’s and Andresen’s challenge, an exploration of

the various neuroscientific, psychological, and medical studies associated
with the Marian apparitions of the Medjugorje visionaries will be pursued
here. Combining these studies with debates on mysticism can exponen-
tially increase our understanding of extraordinary religious experiences,
making a significant contribution.
The first part of this book will examine a brief history of the appari-
tions in Medjugorje, concentrating on the earliest days when the visionar-
ies first claimed a supernatural encounter with the Virgin Mary. Chapter 1
will also explore the messages of Medjugorje that the visionaries report the
Madonna has given them—​many of these messages are meant specifically,
they explain, to be transmitted to the world. We will also explore visions of
the afterlife that the visionaries have said to receive as part of their experi-
ences, testifying to realms that purportedly exist in the hereafter where
every human being ends up after death. We will consider whether such
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10 introduction

claims can be empirically examined, especially through the emerging sci-

ence of studying near-​death experiences.
Chapter 2 will examine the theology that the Catholic Church has devel-
oped in understanding and articulating the differences between forms of
revelation. The chapter will further observe how the Church investigates
a claim of supernatural phenomena such as apparitions or revelations,
noting the various dynamics that are involved. A very brief examination
of Medjugorje’s current status within the Church will also be considered,
given the unique case that Medjugorje presents to the Church as an ongo-
ing apparition site.
Chapter 3 will move into examining the history of interpretation regard-
ing religious and mystical experiences throughout the twentieth century,
beginning with the influence of William James and continuing to James’s
contemporary Evelyn Underhill. James and Underhill constitute two of
the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century who wrote about
mysticism; James was probably the most significant person in prompting
the academic exploration of mysticism among scholars, while Underhill
is the most significant person in introducing mysticism to a popular
audience, particularly to the English-​speaking world, with her work. We
will see how both James and Underhill used discourses on mysticism.
Underhill has studied visionary experiences and other such extraordinary
religious phenomena (including locutions, or auditory phenomena) under
the umbrella of “mysticism,” as she acknowledges that mystics through-
out history have recorded experiencing visions, apparitions, and voices or
locutions. Underhill’s study will be essential to our discourse of visionary
experiences, as Underhill outlines in impressive detail the variations and
intricacies of visionary experiences, providing an explanation of the multi-
dimensional manner in which such phenomena are encountered.
A topic that needs to be addressed is the relationship (often an inter-
twining one) between extraordinary religious experiences, mysticism, and
visionary experiences. Frequently it is impossible to study one of these
subjects without giving due attention to the other, as each is intrinsically
connected and at times terminology overlaps. Mystical experiences are
recognized as a type of religious experience. Visionary experiences can be
traced back to some of the earliest writings on mysticism, specifically mys-
tical theology that, in the Greek and Christian traditions, has for centuries
recognized three types of visionary experiences: imaginative, intellectual,
and corporal visions.30 Marian apparitions qualify in the third category as
corporal visions, the definition of which we will explore in depth in the third
1

Introduction 11

chapter. Therefore, having their roots in mystical theology, discourses on

visionary experiences such as Marian apparitions cannot avoid the essen-
tial subject of mysticism.
Chapter 4 will continue the hermeneutical history with a closer exam-
ination of the perennialist–​constructivist debate. The underlying issues
that are at stake in the discourse will be considered, as will the various
implications behind the methodological approaches applied by scholars
from each side. This hermeneutical history will also dialogue with the
work of modern scholars who reduce extraordinary religious experiences
to natural or pathological explanations.
Chapter 5 will examine in detail the major scientific studies conducted
on the Medjugorje visionaries and their apparitions. The various scien-
tific data will be examined by presenting the procedures and results of
studies that have been carried out by four major teams of doctors and sci-
entists. Chapter 6 will consider the importance of the Medjugorje studies
in relation to reductionistic theories on religious experiences that attempt
to explain such experiences through a natural or pathological interpreta-
tion. Chapter 7 will explore what contributions the Medjugorje studies can
make to epistemological and hermeneutical debates about studying reli-
gious experiences.
Medjugorje constitutes a unique phenomenon in being a modern case
of alleged Marian apparitions, thus of visionary experiences, that have
been empirically investigated with advanced medical, psychological, and
neuroscientific studies while transpiring. This will be the first time that
the scientific studies in Medjugorje will be placed into conversation with
prominent thinkers who have written about extraordinary religious expe-
riences. The results of such a unique case study can make an important
contribution to the philosophical, methodological, and hermeneutical
understanding of extraordinary religious experiences, and can have signif-
icant consequences on ways to move forward in the study of religion and
related disciplines. In short, the case of Medjugorje affords a rare opportu-
nity to understand a deeper dimension of extraordinary religious phenom-
ena like visionary experiences through empirical examination.
12

The Young Woman on the Hill

Everything great is done in the storm.
—​Plato

The evening skies were pierced with lightning, the aggressive weather
continuing into the night. The thunder was deafening. In half a century,
nothing like it was seen in the village: a storm as severe as the one that
struck on June 23, 1981, the very day before the famous apparitions would
begin. Lightning strikes caused fires throughout the village, even burning
down to the ground a local dance hall and half of the village post office
before firefighters were able to save the other half.1 The main telephone
switchboard was struck as well, and the phone lines would be down for
days. The gravity of the storm constituted a rare and curious event, as if
prefiguring the real storm that would soon be breaking out in the quiet vil-
lage. In biblical and apocalyptic literature the word storm, literally meaning
“earthquake,” often denoted a shaking up of an old world in the light of
God bringing in his kingdom, a new reality. In that sense, for the village of
Medjugorje the storm was just beginning.
The events that would forever change the village and touch millions
of people around the world began the very next day, on June 24th. On the
Roman Catholic calendar, the date signified the Feast Day of Saint John
the Baptist, the prophet chosen by God, according to the New Testament,
to announce the coming of his divine son, Jesus Christ, to the world.
On that day in the sleepy little village located in the mountains of cen-
tral Yugoslavia, a group of Croatian teenagers reported that the mother
of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, appeared to them. The following day two more
Croatian youths, this time a teenage girl and a ten-​year-​old boy, would also
report to experience the same phenomenon, claiming—​with the others—​
to see an apparition of the Virgin Mary.2
In Medjugorje, the etymology of the village’s name speaks well to its rural
and isolated location in the midst of the mountains of Bosnia-​Herzegovina,
13

The Young Woman on the Hill 13

since in Croatian Medju means “in between” and gorje “the mountains.” It
was not, however, on one of the surrounding mountains but on a local hill-
side that Ivanka Ivanković and Mirjana Dragičević first reported a super-
natural encounter, alleging to witness an apparition. The teenage girls
admitted later that they were planning to sneak cigarettes that afternoon.
The fifteen-​year-​old Ivanka and the sixteen-​year-​old Mirjana walked along
together from the hamlet of Bijakovici, neighboring Medjugorje, talking
about last night’s terrible thunderstorm and discussing “everyday things—​
what we had done in school, new friends we had made, the latest fashions,
and other things teenaged girls usually talk about.”3 They passed a small
hill called Crnica—​a hill which would be renamed Podbrdo, coming to be
known as “The Hill of Apparitions,” or “Apparition Hill,” after that day.
It was around 6:30 in the evening, author Wayne Weible writes, when
“Ivanka casually glanced to her right and was startled to see a brilliant flash
of light half-​way up the rocky, thistle-​covered hill that overlooked their vil-
lage. In the center of the strange light was the unmistakable silhouette of
a young woman, holding an infant.”4 At the very first sight of the vision,
Ivanka was convinced that it was the Virgin Mary.
“Look, Mirjana, the Madonna!” she exclaimed in shock, her face turn-
ing pale white with fear.5 Ivanka would later recall: “To this day, I don’t
know how I knew, but somehow I just did.”6
Mirjana, refusing to look toward the spot where Ivanka was pointing,
dismissed the audacious claim with a wave of the hand. “Yeah, sure it’s
Our Lady!” she remarked sarcastically. “She came to see what the two of
us are up to because she has nothing better to do.”7 Ivanka continued to
describe what she was seeing, but Mirjana still refused to look that way.
She later recollected: “But as Ivanka continued to tell me what she saw,
I got upset at her. Our parents had taught us to respect faith and never
take God’s name in vain, so when I thought Ivanka was joking about the
Blessed Mother, I felt uncomfortable and afraid.”8
Mirjana began to head home, declaring to Ivanka, “I’m leaving.”
However, as she reached the village something began to draw her back,
later testifying that “a powerful sensation seized my heart. Something was
calling me back—​a feeling so strong that it forced me to stop and turn
around.” When Mirjana returned to the spot where she left her friend, she
“found Ivanka in the same place, gazing at the hill and jumping up and
down. I had never seen her so excited, and chills went through my body
when she turned to look at me. Her normally-​tanned skin looked as pale
as milk, and her eyes were radiant.”9
14

14 Medjugorje and the Supernatur al

“Look now, please!” Ivanka pleaded.

Mirjana recalled the experience poignantly: “I slowly turned and looked
up at the hill. When I saw the figure, my heart whirled with fear and won-
der but my brain struggled to process it. No one ever climbed that hill, but
what I saw was unmistakable—​there, among the rocks and brambles, was
a young woman.”10
The two girls would be joined by other children who also would report
to see the apparition on the hill; among them there was a younger friend,
Milka Pavlović, who was on her way to round up her family’s small flock
of sheep. The girls experienced an admixture of emotions as they looked
at the apparition. “We didn’t know what to do, where to put ourselves,”
Ivanka explained. “We felt a mixture of joy and fear. So much joy, yet so
much fear, it’s impossible to describe.”11
In the distance, upon the hill, the apparition appeared in the light as
a beautiful young woman in a bluish-​gray dress, wearing a white veil, the
girls reported. The visionaries would later describe her as having blue eyes,
long dark hair, rosy cheeks, and radiating a mystical beauty that words could
not capture. Mirjana gave the most detailed description of the apparition
in a written account, describing the mysterious woman on the hill thus:

Her skin was imbued with an olive-​hued radiance, and her eyes
reminded me of the translucent blue of the Adriatic. A white veil
concealed most of her long, black hair, except for a curl visible near
her forehead and locks hanging down below the veil. She wore a
long dress that fell past her feet. Everything I saw seemed supernat-
ural, from the unearthly blue-​gray glow of her dress to the breathtak-
ing intensity of her gaze. Her very presence brought with it a feeling
of peace and maternal love, but I also felt intense fear because I did
not understand what was happening.12

The visionaries would be asked countless times after that day to describe
the beauty of the Virgin as they saw her. They have testified numerous
times that no words can be adequate to describe that reality. Mirjana has
tried to elaborate:

I wanted to describe what made her so beautiful, but I couldn’t

pinpoint anything specific. When people speak of physical beauty,
they often highlight someone’s eyes, hair, or other distinguishing
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
that respect, we would like to inform them that all who believe that
the new Amendment has been or can be put in the Constitution by
governments, “seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in
their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed” our national
and state governments, “not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but
as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the
authorities of each other. These gentlemen must be here reminded
of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever
the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it
will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of
the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be
able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other.”
(Fed. No. 46.) It contributes not a little to the importance of the
quoted statements that they were written by Madison, who also
wrote the real Fifth Article. They are his warning to the then
“adversaries of the Constitution.” They serve well as our warning to
the present adversaries of our Constitution, who assume and have
acted on the assumption that they can ignore its most important
factors whenever government desires to exercise or to grant a new
power to interfere with our individual freedom, although we have not
granted it but have reserved it to ourselves.
We might continue somewhat indefinitely the story of Senate Joint
Resolution 17 in the House of Representatives on that December
day of its passage therein. We would find, however, what we have
already seen of Webb and his colleagues there to be typical of all
they have said and all that they knew of basic American law. We
cannot leave that House on that day, however, without some
comment upon the final eloquent appeal made by Webb at the close
of his arduous labor to secure the passage of the Resolution.
To those, who have any knowledge in the matter, it is well known
that Christ preached the doctrine of free will and temperance, while
Mohammed laid down the law of prohibition. With great curiosity,
therefore, we have listened for years and still listen to the ceaseless
tirade coming from Christian churches where men style themselves
American “Crusaders” and denounce, in no temperate language, all
Americans who do not align themselves under the “Crescent” flag of
Mohammed and respect his Mohammedan command embodied in
the First Section of the Eighteenth Amendment. Our curiosity is not
lessened by the fact that their denunciation of those, who flatly deny
that the command itself is Christian, is always accompanied with an
equally temperate denunciation of those who dare to question their
Tory concept that governments in America can constitute new
government of men.
We have seen Webb, with a candor only equalled by ignorance,
frankly array himself with those who believe the Tory concept, that
the legislatures of the state citizens are “the only tribunal” in which
the national part of the Constitution of the American citizens can be
changed. To his credit, therefore, we find it a matter of record that,
with equal candor, he frankly arrays himself under the “Crescent” flag
of Mohammed and eloquently appeals to all other devotees “of the
great Mohammed” in support of the Mohammedan and un-Christian
precept embodied in the Eighteenth Amendment. That full justice
may be done his eloquence and his candor, these are his own words
on his immortal December 17, 1917: “During one of the great battles
fought by Mohammed, the flag was shot from the ramparts. A daring
and devoted soldier immediately seized it with his right hand and
held it back on the rampart. Immediately his right arm was shot off,
but, never faltering, he seized the flag with his left hand and that, too,
was instantly shot away whereupon with his bleeding stubs he held
the emblem in its place until victory came.
“With a zeal and a determination akin to that which animated this
devotee of the great Mahomet, let us wage a ceaseless battle and
never sheathe our swords until our constitutional amendment is
firmly adopted and the white banner of real effective prohibition
proudly floats over every courthouse and city hall throughout this, the
greatest nation upon earth.” (Congressional Record, Vol. 56, p. 469.)
 CHAPTER XVIII
THE TORY IN THE SENATE

When our present Constitution was before the people of America,

waiting their approval or rejection, Madison and Hamilton published
their series of essays, now known as The Federalist. It is not our
intent to dwell upon the knowledge of American basic law shown by
these two men. Elsewhere our Supreme Court has paid its deserved
tribute to The Federalist as an authority of the greatest weight in the
meaning of our Constitution. At this moment, we desire to mention
one remarkable quality which makes those essays unique among
arguments written in the heat of a great political controversy. They
were written to urge that human beings create a great nation and
grant some enumerated powers to interfere with their own freedom.
They were written when other great leaders were opposing that
project with the utmost ability and eloquence. These opponents, as
is the custom with men in any heated controversy, denounced the
project and its advocates. The abuse of both project and advocates
has probably never been exceeded in America. Yet it is one
remarkable quality of the arguments of Madison and Hamilton, in
The Federalist, that they themselves never leave the realm of reason
and fact and law, or descend to irrelevant abuse of those who differ
in opinion with them.
We, who have lived through the last five years in America, can
truthfully say that the advocates of the new constitution of
government, the Eighteenth Amendment, have made their essays
and speeches and arguments notable for the same quality, by its
utter absence.
Because fact would interfere with the making of their new
Constitution, they have changed fact. Because law meant that
government could not constitute their government of the people, they
have stated law which has never been law in America since 1776.
Because reason would prevent the achievement of their purpose,
they have appealed to irrelevant abuse of those who dared to differ
in opinion with them.
In view of these known facts, we average Americans shall not be
surprised when we read the record of the Senate on its own proposal
that government should exercise a power not delegated to interfere
with individual freedom. Fresh from the reading of the record in the
House, we shall not be surprised to find that the Senate also ignored
the most important factors in the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth
Article, “the people” in the one, and the mention of the people’s
exclusive ability to make national Articles in the other.
When his proposing Resolution came before the Senate on July
30, 1917, Senator Sheppard quickly made clear his mental attitude
on the relation of government to human beings. Whenever a sincere
Tory has voiced himself on that matter, it has always been inevitable
that he betray the thought that human beings are the assets of the
State and not its constituent members. As Madison said, “We have
all known the impious doctrine of the Old World, that people were
made for kings and not kings for the people.” In the country or in the
mind where that doctrine prevails, it is held to be the right and the
privilege of government to see that the people, like the other assets
of the State, are kept in good condition so that all property of the
State may have its greatest economic value in the market of the
world.
And so we find Sheppard, through all his opening support of the
new constitution of government based on the Tory doctrine, making
clear the necessity that our government keep that asset, which is the
citizens of America, in good physical condition like any other
machine that may be in America.
“In an age of machinery and of business transactions on a scale
more enormous and complicated than ever before, the clear eye, the
quick brain and the steady nerve are imperatively demanded.
Society today is more dependent upon the man at the machine than
at any previous period. We are coming to understand that the engine
of the body must have the same care as the engine of the aeroplane,
the battleship, the railway train, the steamship or the automobile; that
the trade in alcohol is a form of sabotage which the human machine
cannot endure; that it is no more to be tolerated than would be the
business of making and selling scrap iron to be dropped into the
delicate and complex machinery of modern manufacture,
transportation and commerce.” (Congressional Record, Vol. 55, p.
5550.)
After this admirably accurate appreciation of the relation of our
American government to the asset which is ourselves, Sheppard
then proceeded to teach us (who have just lived through the
education of the American human beings who made the
Constitution) the real facts of that making, as he knows them.
He is advocating that our only American government should ask
the legislative governments of the states, which are not the
governments of American citizens, directly to interfere with our
individual freedom and to grant to themselves and to our only
government future power to interfere therewith on a matter not
enumerated in the First Article. Naturally, as real fact would make
manifest the absurdity of such proposal, he states that, when the
Constitution was made, “by votes of the Southern States the power
to amend the federal Constitution was vested in three fourths of the
states.” Undoubtedly he meant us to understand that the Constitution
(through whose real making we have just lived) was made by the
states and that the Southern States granted to the legislatures of
three fourths of the states the omnipotent ability over the human
beings of America, which those human beings themselves had
denied to the English king and his legislature. That he meant us so
to understand we shall learn to a certainty in a moment. Meanwhile,
let us note how inadvertently he states part of the truth, while
omitting all reference to the part thereof which would make his own
proposal the clear absurdity which it was.
We note his reference to that part of the Fifth Article which
mentions the ability of three fourths of the state legislatures to
amend the federal Constitution. Because we have lived through the
days of the real American leaders, we recall that our Constitution is
both federal and national and that state legislatures always had
ability to make federal Articles and never had ability to make national
ones. We also remember that those state legislatures were
permitted, by the people who made our Constitution, to retain some
of the ability they had and were given no new ability. We also
remember that the Fifth Article mentions their existing ability to make
federal Articles and prescribes, as the command of the people of
America, that a “Yes” from three fourths of them shall validly make a
change in the federal part of our dual Constitution. For which reason,
with somewhat of amusement, we note Sheppard’s inadvertent
accuracy of statement, when he says that three fourths of the state
legislatures may amend the federal Constitution. With our
knowledge, we do not care what he meant or intended that others
should understand. We know that nothing has been more definitely
settled in America, since 1776, than that legislative governments
never can make a national Article or change our national
Constitution.
We now come to that part of Sheppard’s oration in which he
makes certain his remarkable “knowledge” that our Constitution was
made by the states—which are political entities—and not by the
people of America. With a complacency requisite in one who
advocates that unique constitution of a new kind of government in
America, government of the people by government without authority
from the people, we find him quoting from Calhoun of 1833 the
doctrine that the states made the Constitution. “In this compact they
have stipulated, among other things, that it may be amended by
three fourths of the states; that is, they have conceded to each other
by compact the right to add new powers or to subtract old, by the
consent of that proportion of the states, without requiring, as would
otherwise have been the case, the consent of all.” (Congressional
Record, Vol. 55, p. 5553.)
The history of America from May 29, 1787, to July 30, 1917, was
clearly a sealed book to Sheppard of Texas on that later day.
On May 30, 1787, at Philadelphia, Randolph of Virginia offered the
three Resolutions, which proposed that the people of America create
a nation and absorb into their national system the federal union
which had been made by the states. The first resolution was to
express the sentiment of the convention “that the union of states
merely federal will not accomplish the objects”; the second was to
express the sentiment that “no treaty or treaties among the whole or
part of the states, as individual sovereignties, would be sufficient”;
and the third was to express the sentiment “that a national
government ought to be established, consisting of the supreme
legislative, executive, and judiciary.”
The work of that Philadelphia Convention was carried to a
successful conclusion on the basis of those sentiments. When their
proposed Constitution had been worded, it was sent to and made by
the one people of America, not by the states.
The Constitution of the United States was ordained and
established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities,
but emphatically, as the Preamble of the Constitution
declares, by the “people of the United States.”
So declared Justice Story, from the Bench of the Supreme Court,
as far back as the decision of Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1 Wheat.
324. As Story was an associate of Marshall on that Supreme Court,
and as he is recognized as one of the greatest exponents of our
Constitution, we average Americans prefer his knowledge to that of
Sheppard even when the latter does quote from Calhoun.
Furthermore, in an unbroken line of decisions, extending over the
entire period of more than a century of whose history Sheppard
knows naught, the Supreme Court has insistently proclaimed the
same fact, namely, that the people of America—not the states—
made our Constitution.
“It is no longer open to question that by the Constitution a
nation was brought into being, and that that instrument was
not merely operative to establish a closer union or league of
States.” (Justice Brewer, in the Supreme Court, Kansas v.
Colorado, 206 U. S. 46.)
Indeed, many men before Sheppard have attempted to deny that
fact. History, however, records no successful denial. As Sheppard
states, the words of Calhoun were from his reply to Webster in 1833.
In the history of a century, all a sealed book to Sheppard, Haine also
asserted, against Webster, the belief of Calhoun and Sheppard as to
what were the facts of the making of our Constitution. We average
Americans, in an earlier chapter herein, have read Webster’s
statement as to what were the facts of that making. Having lived,
ourselves, through the days when the Americans did make their own
Constitution, we agree wholly with Webster and the Supreme Court
and know that the states had no part whatever in its actual making.
Over fifty years ago, however, it became absolutely immaterial,
except for academic purposes, what might be the personal beliefs of
ourselves or Calhoun or Haine or Sheppard or Webster. Shortly after
the middle of the last century, the Southern States, just as unwilling
as Sheppard in 1917 to accept the unalterable decision of the
Supreme Court that our Constitution is not a compact between
states, appealed to the only tribunal to which there is any appeal
from that Court, the tribunal of civil war. Even Sheppard must know
the result of Gettysburg, the surrender forever of any claim that the
Constitution is a compact between the states. Even Sheppard must
some time have heard the echo of Lincoln’s appeal, at Gettysburg,
that government of the people, by them and for them, should not
perish from the earth. Even Sheppard must recognize, whether or
not he wish to do so, how successfully the American people, whose
predecessors made the Constitution, answered that appeal of
Lincoln and intend to keep our government a government of the
people, by them and for them, instead of a Sheppard government of
the people, by governments without authority from the people.
We average Americans, however, do not question the wisdom of
Sheppard in quoting the repudiated claim of Calhoun, so long as
Sheppard and his colleagues intended to continue their effort to
impose upon us the new constitution of a new kind of American
government, which is their Eighteenth Amendment. If he and they
were to find anywhere citations in support of the ability of
governments in America to exercise and to grant undelegated power
to interfere with human freedom, to what source could he or they go
for such citations? Their proposition depended wholly for its validity
upon the Tory concept of the relation of government to its assets and
subjects, the people. And, in the five volumes of the records of the
conventions of the Americans, in the two volumes of The Federalist,
and in over two hundred volumes of American decisions in the
Supreme Court, he and they knew that no single citation of authority
could be found to support the idea that we Americans are “subjects”
and not citizens. In the face of such a situation, he and they had but
a choice between the repudiated claims of Calhoun and Haine or the
concepts of Lord North and his associates in the British Parliament
of 1775. We average Americans know what choice we would have
made, under such circumstances. For which reason we are not
surprised to find Sheppard, after his remarkable quotation from
Calhoun, continuing on to say that the states “by reserving to
themselves the unqualified and exclusive right of amendment kept
intact their sovereign capacity in so far as the organic law of the
nation was concerned.” (Congressional Record, Vol. 55, p. 5553.)
With the Supreme Court, we have always known and we still
know, despite Sheppard, that the people of America did all the
reserving that was done and which the Tenth Amendment merely
declared had been done. We note, with intent to remember, how
clearly Sheppard demonstrated his total ignorance of the most
important factor in that Tenth Amendment, “the people,” and of the
most important factor in the Fifth Article, the mention of the reserved
exclusive ability of the people themselves, assembled in their
“conventions,” to amend or change or add any national Article in
their Constitution.
As we go on with his oration of that July day, we find him insisting,
as we found the House insisting on a later day, that the states and
their legislative governments are all the protection to our individual
liberties which the American people were able to attain by the efforts
of those remarkable years from 1775 to 1790. Curiously enough, that
insistence is mentioned in the same breath in which he suggests that
we, the citizens of America, have some rights, evidently in the nature
of privileges which a government confers on its subjects. This is
what he has to say: “In refusing the people the right to appeal to the
only tribunal having power of amending, the tribunal of the states, for
the redress of what they consider one of the most terrible grievances
in the republic, Congress would deny to them one of the most sacred
of all rights, the right of petition.”
 Why should the supreme legislature not deny that right of petition
to us, if the inferior state legislatures, who are not governments of
the citizens of America, claim power to deny us any right they
please, as they do by their supposed Eighteenth Amendment to our
Constitution?
But we waste time on this Sheppard. Let him say his own farewell
to us; the citizens of America, in his closing words of July 30, 1917.
As Webb, in the House, closed with his eloquent appeal to every true
Mohammedan, we naturally find Sheppard closing with his appeal to
whatever Tory sentiment believes that the same most important
factor in the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth Article should be equally
ignored.
“At the close of this debate we will have an opportunity to enable
the states to exercise their highest function—the right to shape, alter,
and develop the federal Constitution. They are the proper tribunal to
decide the fate of this Amendment. They compose the mightiest
array of free commonwealths united in a federated whole the world
has ever seen.... If there is anything in the Amendment subversive of
their liberties and their welfare, they can be trusted to condemn it.
Let not Congress assume to judge for them. Let Congress discharge
its preliminary task of submission and stand aside. Let it put in
motion the referendum provided by the national organic law—the
method of amendment the states themselves established when they
created the Constitution. Let the states perform the duty which
remains the sole instance of their sovereignty over the federal
government itself.” (Congressional Record, Vol. 55, p. 5554.)
If it were still 1833, if there never had been a Gettysburg or an
Appomattox, could Calhoun himself have done better? If there never
had been the Statute of 1776 or an American Revolution to make it
the basic law of America, could any Tory peer in the Westminster
Parliament of 1775 have been more zealous to see that the states
themselves—which are mere political entities—should determine
whether there was anything in the Eighteenth Amendment
“subversive of their liberties and their welfare?” If there is, “they can
be trusted to condemn it.” Let our “Congress discharge its
preliminary task of submission and stand aside.” What if there is
anything in the Amendment subversive of our liberties and our
welfare? Why should we be trusted with the opportunity to condemn
it, the opportunity which we reserved exclusively to ourselves by the
most important factors in the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth Article?
Why should we remember that Jefferson, also from a Southern
State, penned the Statute of 1776 in which the American people
commanded that no government acquire power over people except
from people and not from governments? Why should we remember
that Pendleton, also from the South, while actually engaged with all
the rest of the American people in making the First Article, referred
to it and asked, “Who but the people can delegate powers? What
have the state governments to do with it?” Why should we remember
that Wilson, in the previous December, that of 1787, said of our
Constitution, “Upon what principle is it contended that the sovereign
powers reside in the state governments? The proposed system sets
out with a declaration that its existence depends upon the supreme
authority of the people alone? How comes it, sir, that these state
governments dictate to their superiors—to the majesty of the
people?” Why should we remember that Webster, answering Hayne
and Calhoun, said, also speaking of our Constitution, “While the
people choose to maintain it as it is—while they are satisfied with it,
and refuse to change it—who has given, or who can give, to the
state legislatures a right to alter it, either by interference,
construction, or otherwise?... Sir, the people have not trusted their
safety, in regard to the general constitution, to these hands. They
have required other security and taken other bonds.” (4 Ell. Deb.
508.)
It is true that these earlier Americans have clearly in mind the most
important factor in both the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth Article.
But it must not be forgotten that Pendleton and Wilson and the
Americans of that day, in making our Constitution, in constituting a
new government and giving to it some powers over the freedom of
human beings, were acting entirely outside any written law except
the Statute of ’76. Is not their example a sound precedent for those
who are now constituting a new government of Americans and giving
it power over their freedom, for those who made the Eighteenth
Amendment and those who upheld its validity? What if the makers of
the new government are themselves government? If governments
choose to act outside of all written law and to ignore that part thereof
which is the important factor of the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth
Article, are these governments not emulating the example of the
American people in 1787? True, these American people did act in
strict conformity to the Statute of 1776, and this modern constitution
of new government by government is not in conformity with that
Statute. But was not that Statute itself the revolt of human beings
against government? If human beings, by successful revolt against
government, could change themselves from subjects to citizens, why
cannot government, by successful revolt against human beings,
change them from citizens to subjects?
If, however, Sheppard and Webb and those of their Tory faith insist
that the new constitution of government is in our Constitution, and
put there validly, under claimed grant from us to state governments
of omnipotence over American citizens, we, on our part, know that
their claim is without the slightest support. Moreover, our knowledge
in that respect is knowledge of indisputable legal fact. That the fact
would be equally indisputable, even if our Constitution was a
compact between states, as Calhoun did claim, and as Sheppard
does claim, we can clearly demonstrate even to Sheppard himself.
Our education with the earlier Americans, who changed their status
from that of subject to citizen, has taught us all we need for that
demonstration.
Let us assume, what Sheppard asserts, that the states made the
Constitution, that it is a compact between states. Sheppard is a
Texan. If our Constitution is a compact between states, the State of
Texas is one of the parties to that compact. We ask Sheppard
whether he and the other Texans are the State of Texas or whether
the legislative government in Texas is the State of Texas? If he
answers that the Texas legislature is the State of Texas, we proceed
no further. That answer will be his frank confession that the Texan is
a subject of the Texas government and not a citizen or member of
the Texas State.
 On the other hand, if he answers that the human beings of Texas
are the State of Texas, we do proceed further. We proceed along the
most definitely settled legal principle in America. If the human beings
in Texas are its citizens and constitute its State, the constitution of
Texas is their creation and the legislature of Texas is the creature of
that constitution. From the Texans, through the creation which is their
constitution, that legislature derives its every power over the human
beings in Texas and cannot have any such power except by grant
from those human beings themselves. That is the law of Texas,
settled by hundreds of decisions in Texas and America. Now, if our
American Constitution is a compact between the State of Texas—the
human beings in Texas—and the other states—the human beings in
the other states—how comes it that the mere creature of the Texans,
without power over them except from them, can, by combination with
other servant legislatures outside Texas, give to itself and to other
governments outside Texas a new power to interfere with the
freedom of the human beings in Texas?
We are rather afraid that Sheppard and those of his faith, even
assuming that our Constitution is a compact between states, have
entirely overlooked the legal fact that a government is not the State
in America. We are rather afraid that they have reverted to what
Madison called “the impious doctrine of the Old World,” namely, that
the government is the State and the human beings are its asset and
its property. We are rather afraid that they agreed with the concept of
Louis of France, expressed in his famous “I am the State.”
On no other basis can we explain their complete ignorance of the
one important factor in the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth Article,
“the people” of America, who, assembled in their “conventions,” as
mentioned in the Fifth Article, are the citizens of America and
compose the State or Nation of America.
We average Americans, in the light of our education, reading the
record of that July 30 in our Senate, would have thought, were it not
for one fact, that every senator was using the expurgated edition of
the Constitution, which Webb later used in the House, and which
omits entirely from the Fifth Article the words, “by conventions in
three fourths of” the states. Were it not for that one fact our thought
would have been justified. We know that the proposition of
Sheppard, embodied in his Senate Resolution No. 17, was that the
proposed new Article should be referred to the tribunal of the state
legislative governments. We know, and we have quoted his own
statement, which is the basis of that knowledge, that he held that
legislative tribunal to be “the only tribunal having power of amending”
our Constitution. We know that he held this legislative tribunal to be
“the proper tribunal to decide the fate of this Amendment.” We know
his confidence that this legislative and government tribunal has “the
right to shape, alter, and develop” our Constitution, ordained and
established by the citizens of America. His conviction, in this respect,
is stamped indelibly on our mind, because it came in such sharp
conflict with our knowledge that all Americans of an earlier day held
that every national Article, like the First Article and the supposed
Eighteenth Amendment, must be referred to that other tribunal, the
only tribunal competent to make such Articles where men are
citizens and not subjects, the tribunal of the American citizens
themselves, the tribunal mentioned in the Fifth Article in the words
“by conventions in three fourths of” the states in America.
We know, therefore, inasmuch as neither Sheppard nor any
senator but one apparently knew of the existence of that other and
supreme tribunal or of the presence of those words in the Fifth
Article, that all senators save that one must have been using an
expurgated edition of the Fifth Article.
On that July 30 we find Senator Ashurst making plain that he has
our edition of our Constitution. He said, “When our federal
Constitution was written in 1787, two methods of amending were
provided; and, unless I am mistaken, it was the first written
constitution in history which provides for two methods of
amendment.” This brief and simple mention of that significant fact, in
relation to the Fifth Article, seems to have been the only cognizance
of the fact itself, in the Senate of that day or in the entire subsequent
history of the Eighteenth Amendment, even in the great litigations
about it in which were arrayed against one another the most
renowned “constitutional” lawyers in America. So far as would
appear from the Senate record, no knowledge of the amazingly
important effect of that Fifth Article mention of two distinct powers
(one limited and then existing in government and the other unlimited
and then and now existing in the American people) to make future
Articles was acquired in the Senate or afterward, from the fact itself
or from Ashurst’s allusion to the fact.
Back at Philadelphia in 1787, Gerry, always Tory in his mental
attitude to government and human being, realized fully the amazing
importance of this Fifth Article mention of the two then existing
powers to make Articles, the limited power of legislative
governments to make federal Articles (which had made all the
federal Articles of 1781) and the unlimited and exclusive power of
the people themselves to make national Articles, which had been
exercised to make the national Articles in each existing state
constitution, and which the Philadelphia Convention had already
ascertained and held was the only power competent to make such
Articles as their own proposed First Article and the Eighteenth
Amendment. While the Philadelphia Convention had been
discussing and deciding that their proposed Constitution, because of
its First Article, the real constitution of government, must be referred
to the people, Gerry had always opposed that decision. He had
always fought to have that First Article sent to government, to have
its grants of power over the freedom of men made by government to
government. When, therefore, the closing business day of that
Convention was reached on September 15, 1787, he made his final
and consistent Tory effort that citizens should be asked to make a
Fifth Article which would change them back again to the subjects
they had been in 1775. That effort was his motion of September 15
to strike from the Fifth Article, as we know it, the words “or by
conventions in three fourths of” the states. He knew, as we know, by
reason of our education with the Americans who defeated his effort,
that those words are the Fifth Article mention of the then existing
only ability in America which then could or now can make such
Articles as the original First Article or as the supposed Eighteenth
Amendment. He knew, as we average Americans now know, that,
only if such mention were stricken from that Fifth Article, could any
future possible claim be made that legislative governments have
ability to exercise or to grant undelegated power to interfere with
individual freedom. With the important object in mind, that he secure
some foundation for such claim in the future, he made his motion to
strike that mention of our exclusive power from that Fifth Article. As
we average Americans know, his effort to have a convention even
propose such a Fifth Article to “a people better acquainted with the
science of government than any other people in the world” was
beaten by the decisive vote of 10 to 1.
The proposal of the Eighteenth Amendment by government to
government was the attempt of our servant American government to
reverse the result of that vote of September 15, 1787. The action of
the state legislative governments in America upon that proposed
Eighteenth Amendment was an action depending entirely for its
validity upon a recount of that vote and the assumption that the
convention did strike out that mention of our exclusive power to
make national Articles and that the Fifth Article went to the American
people and was made by them without that mention in it. For which
very obvious reasons, we average Americans do not understand
how the fact, to which Ashurst made brief allusion on July 30, 1917,
was not the basis of every attack made in the Supreme Court by
many of the most renowned “constitutional” lawyers in America,
when they did assail the validity of that Eighteenth Amendment.
It is difficult to pick out the one most remarkable thing in the
complete story of the last five years. Yet we are inclined to believe
that, from a certain point of view, the one most remarkable thing is
the absolute failure of even one of those renowned lawyers to
appreciate or know or mention the fact and its decisive effect upon
the alleged validity of the Amendment they challenged, the fact that
the Fifth Article does name two future makers of Articles, the
governments which could and did make the federal Articles of 1781,
but which neither could nor did make the First Article of 1787 or the
Eighteenth Amendment of 1917, and the citizens of America, who
could and did make the First Article of 1787 and who alone can
make but have not made the Eighteenth Amendment.
Even Ashurst seems to have known that it was remarkable, unique
in history, for the Fifth Article to name two different makers of future
Articles. It is amazing that the imperative reason for this naming of
two makers, distinct and different in their ability to make, never
suggested itself to any of the renowned lawyers of 1920, even
though they knew the dual nature, national and federal, of our
Constitution. It is amazing when we realize that the Supreme Court,
in 1819, had stated, as an obvious thing, that, when the First Article
(granting power to interfere with the freedom of men) was proposed,
the legal “necessity of referring it to the people, and of deriving its
powers directly from them, was felt and acknowledged by all.” It is
amazing when the same Supreme Court in 1907 had authoritatively
repeated that statement: “The powers the people have given to the
general government are named in the Constitution, and all not there
named, either expressly or by implication, are reserved to the people
and can be exercised only by them or upon further grant from them.”
However, we average Americans, still pursuing the history of
America to learn when we again became “subjects,” will later herein
consider the litigation about the Eighteenth Amendment. So far as
the Senate is concerned, we leave it on December 18, 1917, the day
on which it finally proposed that legislative governments make the
Eighteenth Amendment, whose Second Section was exactly of the
same nature as the First Article, namely, an Article of the kind which
the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 had known never could be
made by legislative governments in America. In that Senate, as in
the House, the public record discloses no American who did not
ignore the most important factor in the Tenth Amendment and the
Fifth Article, no American who knew the legal necessity of deriving,
directly from the people themselves, every power to interfere with the
individual freedom of the people.
So far as history tells the tale, in the legislatures of the states, that
legal necessity was “known and acknowledged” by none. There were
many therein, as there were many in the later court litigations, who
opposed the making on the ground of its unwisdom. There were also
many, again as in the later litigations, who contended that there
should be no interference with the freedom of American citizens, as
such, except on the matters enumerated in the First Article. But,
neither in our own American legislature nor in these state
legislatures, as in the later litigations, was there one who knew the
only legal and maintainable ground for that belief, the legal fact, as
the Philadelphia Convention found it, that only the American people
could validly grant government power to interfere with their individual
freedom, and the legal fact that the American people, constituting
their government, kept the legal situation, in that respect, exactly as
the Philadelphia Convention found it, by the most important factors in
the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth Article.
The amazing haste with which the ratifying legislatures exercised,
for the first time in America, this imaginary power to interfere with the
individual freedom of the American citizens is a matter of history. The
manner in which that legislative exercise of imaginary government
power over subjects was secured in many states is something with
which we are all familiar. We desire, however, to emulate the
example set by Madison and Hamilton in The Federalist, so far as
judgment can restrain the honest indignation of citizens, when
government undertakes to make them “subjects.” Therefore we
leave it entirely to those who uphold the validity of the supposed new
Amendment to substitute irrelevant matter, mostly personal abuse
that is harmless in view of its source, for the sound legal arguments
in support of validity, which they can never find until the Statute of
’76 is repealed and our constitutions of government are so changed
that we cease to be citizens and become the subjects our ancestors
were in 1775.
For those who would like to look upon all American governments
as model exemplars of American respect for American law and
American constitutions, the date of the proposal in December, 1917,
and the quickness of ratification and the manner in which ratification
was largely secured, are all matters most unpleasant to contemplate.
Even now the most sincere advocate of the new Amendment never
speaks of it without unwittingly showing his chagrin at the general
knowledge that it was proposed and passed by governments when
millions of the citizens of those governments were fighting and were
armed to fight for human liberty, and that even governments would
never have dared to pass it except at that particular time.
These facts, however, reflect only on the virtue of the Amendment.
They have no bearing upon its validity. We average Americans are
interested now only in that claimed validity. We know that, if it is
valid, we have become subjects, that we are no longer citizens. We
are seeking to find out when and how that change was made in our
relation to all governments in America. Beginning on July 4, 1776,
we have come down to December 18, 1917. We have found
ourselves, on that day, still citizens. We know that our servant
legislature at Washington made a proposal on that day, which was
legally absurd, unless we had already become subjects. We have
listened carefully to what they had to say, in support of that proposal,
and have ascertained that they neither knew nor understood the
most important factor in our Tenth Amendment and Fifth Article, by
which our ancestors kept their own and our status as citizens. We
know that the state legislatures could not change that status.
Therefore we now simply note the fact that, in 1918, some of them
ratified the proposal on the basis that all of us were their subjects.
We know that our own government at Washington has acted,
whenever it felt disposed to enforce the supposed new command
against us and not to disobey it openly itself, as if we were the
subjects of those ratifying legislatures.
We know also that in 1920, after more than a year of exhaustive
study of our history and our Constitution and our laws by hundreds of
our most eminent lawyers, all working for one object, the legal
demonstration of the invalidity of the new Amendment, a chosen
number of the most renowned “constitutional” lawyers in America
appeared in the Supreme Court and orally argued against validity
and filed the briefs against validity which were the result of this
concentrated effort. We know also that, in that court, on behalf of our
own government and on behalf of those other governments which
that government has proclaimed to be the supreme dictator in
America, there also appeared another chosen array of the most
renowned “constitutional” lawyers, in the forefront being a former
justice of that court, now the American Secretary of State. This latter
array appeared to demonstrate how and when, since 1790, our own
status was changed from citizen to subject and the collective
legislatures of some of the states were substituted for ourselves as
possessors of the supreme constitutional will in America.
 We average Americans, therefore, to complete our education, now
turn to the arguments of these lawyers and to their briefs, with
somewhat of chagrin at our own unaided ability to ascertain the
“when” and “how” we became subjects and our Constitution, in its
national Articles and aspect, became the creature of legislative
governments, although the American people originally created it to
be the master of all governments.