Saturday, December 13, 1997

Some see Mary movement as humanity's last hope

By Karen Auge / Knight-Ridder Newspapers

DALLAS -- Three thousand pairs of eyes focused on the back of an average-looking man in a blue suit.

Aside from an occasional baby's wail or sputtering cough, St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church, packed beyond overflowing, was silent.

It was 6:40 p.m., the hour that Mary, the mother of Jesus, comes to him, this pale-skinned, black-haired Catholic from a tiny village in what used to be Yugoslavia. And so he knelt, his back to the assembled faithful, his head bent, and listened.

At this time every day for 16 years, Mary has talked to him of love and prayer, hope and forgiveness. And he has talked to her, touched her, looked at the most revered woman in 2,000 years of Christianity as if she were his own mother standing before him.

Or so millions believe.

His name is Ivan Dragicevic and he is 32, married and the father of a 3-year-old daughter. He lives in Boston, his wife's hometown, and spends only summers in Medjugorje, the tiny village where on a Wednesday afternoon in June 1981, he says, he was just trying to watch a basketball game on television when Mary appeared on a hillside to him and five other teen-agers.

This week, Dragicevic became the first of the six to visit Texas. And in San Antonio, Victoria, Austin and Oak Cliff, thousands caused traffic jams and stood for hours to see him.

Mary is very big these days.

In this century, hundreds of people have reported seeing Mary's image, hearing her talk to them -- more, some scholars say, than in the previous three centuries combined.

In September, a Haltom City woman, Teresa Whitt, announced that Mary speaks of love and forgiveness through her at weekly prayer meetings in her home. Despite a letter from the Rev. Joseph P. Delaney, bishop of the Fort Worth Diocese, calling the event "well-meaning" but misguided, hundreds attended a Sept. 14 prayer gathering in Trinity Park where Whitt spoke.

Many current "visionaries" share updates on Mary-related miracles -- crucifixes that turn to gold, the sun spinning in the sky, weeping statues -- on the numerous Web sites devoted to her.

Other devotees read about Mary and her messages in dozens of newsletters, magazines and books that circulate among a growing Marian subculture that thrives within the Catholic Church and beyond.

One of those publications was launched by a South Carolina man named Wayne Weible, a Lutheran who published small-town secular newspapers until a videotape about the apparitions inspired him to devote his life to "spreading the Medjugorje message." Since 1986, Weible says, he has distributed 50 million copies of his newsletter worldwide.

An Ohio theology professor, Mark Miravalle, says more than 4.5 million people have signed petitions and more than 500 bishops have endorsed his controversial quest to have Pope John Paul II declare as infallible dogma Mary's status as co-redemptrix, alongside Christ.

Miravalle acknowledges there may be a connection between the rise of charismatic Protestant churches and the tide of Marian interest. The roots of both may lie, Miravalle said, in a generation's acknowledgement that "the experiments of the '70s failed; that the Ôme' generation has not produced a Ôwe' generation" and is suffering a spiritual drought because of it.

"In this culture, people want a mother," Miravalle said.

Author Michael Brown said he believes this century has seen a "cascade of apparitions," for a reason. Mary preceded her son the first time, "she precedes him the second time. He's sent her now because I think we're seeing more evil now" than at any time in history, said Brown, a former secular journalist and author who has devoted the past decade to writing about faith.

Brown sees the Mary movement as humanity's last hope to straighten up or face the consequences. "I think we're facing a series of chastisements" for that evil. Mary is trying to warn us, to convince us to straighten up, Brown said.

Elizabeth Victory of Cleburne is a mother of four and a lifelong Catholic. But since visiting Medjugorje, she has made "Our Lady" and her messages in Medjugorje virtually her life.

Victory has visited Medjugorje, in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina, twice. She volunteers tirelessly at the Queen of Peace Center of Fort Worth, one of dozens of similar centers -- there are at least 10 in Texas -- that act as clearinghouses of Marian and Medjugorje-related information.

In September, Victory organized a bus trip that took more than 70 pilgrims to Wichita for a Marian conference that she said drew 4,000 to hear another of the Medjugorje visionaries.

And when Brown was here last month to speak at St. John the Apostle Catholic Church in North Richland Hills, Victory was his chauffeur.

His hostess was Eleanor Wetzel, who runs the Dallas Queen of Peace Center, and who helped organize Dragicevic's visit last week. Like Victory, Wetzel said she has always been a serious Catholic. But when she saw a film of the Medjugorje messages, "I believed instantly" that they were from God.

The belief changed her life -- her plans for relaxing and gardening after raising her children evaporated when she took over running the Queen of Peace Center. She fasts and goes more often to confession.

She didn't intend to visit the village, though, until one of her 12 children, a cloistered Carmelite nun, persuaded her to go. "I realized, ÔWho am I to have the knowledge that this heavenly creature is on earth and I would choose not to go and be in her presence?' " Wetzel said.

Wetzel has no trouble differentiating the roles of Mary and Christ. "God has chosen her to be our protectress at this time in history. Jesus is our redeemer; she is our protector."

The Catholic Church officially is neutral on the subject of the ongoing apparitions; no diocese or parish sponsored Dragicevic's visit. That was done by the Queen of Peace Center.

Not open to question is that the visions have forever changed the lives of Dragicevic and the five other youths, and changed, too, the lives of everyone who lives in Medjugorje, a once-isolated village that now has its own Web site, is sold worldwide as a package-tour destination that has drawn an estimated 10 million to 20 million pilgrims, and whose name has become synonymous with a remarkable surge of Marian devotion.

He told them how he had gone to Mass with his parents that day, then went home, had lunch, played soccer and settled in to watch a basketball game with a friend.

His parents and his priest didn't believe him at first.

When one of the teen-aged girls asked, " ÔWho are you?' she said, ÔI am the blessed Virgin Mary, queen of peace,' " Dragicevic said. " ÔMy son sent me to help you, dear children.' "

He has stopped asking himself, and Mary, why he was chosen. He knows his life will never be as it was. "It's very difficult to see our lady every day and to be in this world. Every day I look at heaven and at the beauty of our lady, but with prayer, I'm able to adapt to the fact that I must live in this world."

In her conversations, "Our mother speaks simply," Dragicevic said. "She does not bring fears, she comes as a mother of hope."

Mary has warned believers to be wary of false prophets, of prophecies of doom. According to Dragicevic, she wants people to pray more, to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, to go to church and confession, to avoid sin and to take the time to pray and to teach children to pray.

"She doesn't expect us to know what someone else is doing wrong," Dragicevic said. "She is not teaching us to criticize others but calls us to pray for others.

"In one message, our lady said, ÔPut the Bible in your home in a visible place' " -- and she didn't mean as a decoration, he said.

By the time Dragicevic was through, nearly four hours had passed since the church filled well beyond capacity. For nearly four hours, Sean O'Brien, a 36-year-old chemist, had stood in a corner near the front of St. Elizabeth, through nearly an hour of rosary prayer, through the Rev. Michael Dugan's homily, through half a dozen renditions of "Ave Maria." He had joined most of the estimated 3,000 there in taking communion.

When it was over, O'Brien, a video camera on his shoulder, said he had come from Plano to hear Dragicevic "in case it's true."

He was impressed, he said, by the simplicity of the message. If Dragicevic had talked of Armageddon and doom, of wrath and judgment instead of love and unity, "I would have walked out."

As a Catholic, O'Brien has watched Mary devotees gain strength, and he has heard of efforts to name her a co-redemptrix. And he cautiously approves.

"It's OK," O'Brien said. "As long as they don't forget she's not Jesus."

(c) 1997, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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