There’s been much discussion of late to the effect of ‘how could the jurors believe such an impossible story,’ and ‘look how people will believe anything, as long as it confirms an existing hatred.’ The implication is, sometimes, that this behaviour is mostly extra-ecclesial, and mostly characteristic of the anti-Catholic left. However, walking along on my lunch break, I remembered Medjugorje, and I remembered that Vicka blinked.

Often, during those apparitions which are later approved, the seer goes into an ecstasy during which her body neither feels pain or receives injury. (At Lourdes, for example, St Bernadette was pricked with pins and had her hand held over burning flame to no effect.) During one of the ‘apparitions’ at Medjugorje, an onlooker jabbed into the eyes of the ‘ecstatic’ Vicka. Like any normal person not in ecstasy, she blinked and moved her head out of the way. It was captured on video.

Following the incident, the seers left the room. After a brief interval, Vicka returned, and told the one investigator present that the moment she’d blinked and moved backwards wasn’t because of the onlooker’s action. It was because, at that same moment, she thought Our Lady was going to drop the Baby Jesus, and she’d started, thinking she’d have to catch Him.

Those words should have been the end of the Medjugorje industry. Never mind the sexual misadventures of Father Tomislav Vasic. Never mind Our Lady adjusting her appearances to suit the travel arrangements of the seers on their international speaking tours. Never mind the banality of the ‘messages’, their inherent and repeated contradictions, and their deviations from Catholic teaching. The moment those words were out of Vicka’s mouth, all credulity should have ceased. Even leaving aside the question of why you’d move backwards to catch someone who seemed about to fall to the ground in front of you, the absurdity of Our Lady presenting an image of herself dropping her Child (why? an image has no muscles; an image doesn’t grow tired; Our Lady’s body is in a perfected state – why would she drop her Baby??) should have been enough.

But it wasn’t. In this vale of tears, who wouldn’t prefer to feel guided than not-guided? Of course many would rather feel that Our Lady was here than that she wasn’t here, would rather see miracles than not see them. They’ll believe what it comforts them to belief, regardless of how ridiculous the narrative is, because, often, this has been the only comfort offered them. This being so, why should we expect otherwise of people outside the Church? Why would we expect God to illumine minds and hearts when we have willfully blinded our own so completely that an entire industry has been supported by it for over twenty years?