From Publishers Weekly
In what often reads like a spiritual whodunit, author and Rolling Stone contributing editor Sullivan takes readers on a journey into the labyrinthine world of religious apparitions and miracle investigations. Sullivan's fascination with the subject began in 1994 when he learned of a spiritual phenomenon in his own backyard—the reported apparition of the Virgin Mary in a rundown trailer in eastern Oregon. Intrigued, he did some cursory research about such occurrences and proposed to his publisher to do a book on "miracle detectives." He began in Rome, where he met with Catholic Church officials charged with investigating such phenomena, and proceeded to the village of Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia, where the Virgin reportedly first appeared to six young people in 1981. It was in Medjugorje that Sullivan encountered an unexpected turn in his investigation—a personal religious experience in which a mysterious young woman came to his aid as he made a pilgrimage up the mountain of Krizevac. This and his subsequent spiritual encounters make for an interesting subplot as Sullivan continues his quest to explain the unexplainable, though he never fully discloses the details of where those experiences led him. Much has been written about Marian apparitions, particularly those at Medjugorje, but The Miracle Detective may well emerge as one of the most comprehensive and engaging modern works on the subject. Well told and expertly researched, Sullivan's book should appeal to skeptics and believers alike. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Science admits no dilution. If even traces of a foreign element -- politics, faith, convenience -- are added to its batch of sweet reason, science may do artful, surprising, even inspirational things. But it is no longer science. Despite -- or maybe because of -- this hard truth, those men charged by the Roman Catholic Church with investigating claims of the miraculous deserve special regard. From the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro to the apparitions of Our Lady of Scottsdale, Ariz., they vet each purported miracle in a spirit of caution and rational inquiry. But a scientific approach to the miraculous is ultimately as futile as St. Augustine's effort to comprehend the Trinity. This absurd dilemma is what gives Randall Sullivan's The Miracle Detective its quirky charm. Prompted by reports of a 1994 vision of the Virgin Mary in Boardman, Ore., Sullivan set out to profile the church's supernatural investigators. This group includes some formidable figures, including the sharp, literarily astute Dominican Father Gabriel O'Donnell, and the celebrated Capuchin Father Benedict Groeschel, a star of the EWTN channel, an author of a celebrated study of mysticism and a dead ringer for R. Crumb's Mr. Natural. Both men play very minor roles here, however, and The Miracle Detective is emphatically not the book Sullivan set out to write: As he encounters blissed-out visionaries and has a few supernatural episodes of his own, Sullivan places his own search for religious truth front and center. Most of the book concerns the author's experiences in Medjugorje, the village in Bosnia-Herzegovina where someone claiming to be Mary has been appearing to six ethnic Croatians since 1981. Sullivan catalogues his doubts and ably presents the views of skeptics (among them the local bishop), but these counterarguments get generally short shrift (the growing skepticism of a priest who began as a fervent Medjugorje supporter strikes the author as "like the progress of a disease"), and we find frequent instances in which this or that formerly skeptical scientist concludes that some phenomenon "cannot be explained naturally, and thus can be only preternatural or supernatural." The book is an extended argument for the authenticity of the Medjugorje apparitions. Sullivan, a contributing editor of Rolling Stone, retains a sharp journalistic instinct, and his exhaustive rendering of the Medjugorje story is, if not the best journalistic account of the subject (the Medjugorje literature is too vast to allow a confident claim), certainly the best one I have read. Though he is too dismissive of the political dimensions of Mariology, and in particular of Marian anti-communism (particularly in light of the way Franjo Tudjman used the Medjugorje apparitions in delivering his death blow to the Yugoslav federation), Sullivan brilliantly situates the apparitions within the context of the Balkan war. Amazingly, this makes him something of a pioneer: You could read whole volumes of dopey Medjugorje witnessing without suspecting that the Balkans endured a vicious civil war in the 1990s. The Miracle Detective contains vivid passages, nicely rendered theological history and suspenseful incidents. With so much to recommend in Sullivan's book, I hate to carp, but the line editing is often shoddy (John Cornwell, not Cornwall, is the author of Hitler's Pope), Sullivan's credulity is frequently stunning (he uncritically recounts the ancient Serbian saw about soldiers impaling babies on their swords -- a charge leveled at every foe from the Apaches to the Iraqis -- in reference to the Serbs of the 1920s), and his gaffes are sometimes mortifying (I wanted to put the book down when squadrons of B-52s, an aircraft not even introduced until 1951, were observed bombing Germany during World War II). I mention such picayune stuff because I agree with the Scottsdale seer who at one point advises the author: "You should pray for the gift of discernment, Randall, because you need it tremendously." Case in point: Early in the book, the Boardman seer, in a description of her secular history (tales of dispirited pre-visionary wanderings are pro forma among Marian prophets), tells Sullivan: "Going through high school, I was taught about evolution, that we were monkeys, and there was really no God." Public high school teachers are among the most risk-averse people in America, and the idea that one would risk a definitive statement on God's nonexistence is laughable; the bit about the monkeys is a typical ill-informed caricature of Darwinism. These comments are fibs and should send up a red flag about the speaker's honesty on larger matters, but Sullivan takes no notice.He could have learned a few things from O'Donnell, Groeschel and some of the other hardheaded priests he encountered. Self-doubt and second thoughts provide dramatic reading, but they are no substitutes for rational skepticism. And without that, Mariology doesn't even make good pseudo-science. Reviewed by Tim CavanaughCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
In 1994, Sullivan, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone and Men's Journal, learned about a vision of Mary appearing in an Oregon trailer and decided he might like to write about how the Catholic Church investigates such sightings. What he didn't know was that his "reporting" would turn into a personal quest leading him to Medjugorie, where six young seers see visions on the backdrop of the Bosnian war; to Scottsdale, Arizona, a seemingly unlikely spot for visionaries but the home of a group of them nonetheless; and to Rome, where Sullivan has brushes with both the pope and the devil. If what Sullivan writes about is astounding--sightings, healings, possession--the breadth and depth of his work is rather astonishing as well. This is a stunning mix of the personal and the historic, interviews and experiences, with Sullivan incredibly nimble at making the worlds overlap--in a way, just as visionaries do. He combines his own questions and doubts--even his anguish over the lives of those who claim to see Mary--with the history that is being played out at the time, especially the war in Bosnia, about which he goes into incredible, painful detail. His writing draws readers into his search for answers, and soon we find ourselves sharing his excitement, depression, and anger. Does he find his answers? Well, as one priest puts it, "true belief is a decision." Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
A gripping investigation into the extraordinary phenomenon of Virgin Mary sightings around the world, the priests and scientists who investigate them, and a powerful examination about what constitutes the miraculous in the contemporary world In a tiny, dilapidated trailer in northeastern Oregon, a young Mexican woman saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in an ordinary landscape painting hanging on her bedroom wall. After being met with skepticism from the local parish, the Catholic diocese officially placed the matter "under investigation." Investigative journalist Randall Sullivan wanted to know how exactly one might conduct the official inquiry into such an incident and set off to interview "the miracle detectives." These were the theologians, historians, and postulators from the Sacred Congregation of the Causes for Saints who were charged by the Vatican with testing the miraculous and judging the holy. What Sullivan didn’t know was that his own investigation would lead from Vatican City in Rome to the tiny village of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where six visionaries have been receiving apparitions of the Virgin Mary. These raptures have been the subject of more medical and scientific examination than any other purported supernatural event ever recorded. An examination of the longest-running Marian apparitions in history, and the author’s own faith and beliefs as he himself becomes a miracle detective, are at the heart of Randall Sullivan’s stunning new book, The Miracle Detective. Sullivan uncovers a contemporary history of raptures and holy apparitions dating back to the ninteenth-century visions at Lourdes. Amid a tapestry of believers, skeptics, and apostates, we meet the compassionate Father Slavko Barbaric, an intellectual priest who is known as the Medjugorje seers’ "spiritual director," and the legendary Father Groeschel, who is continually called upon to investigate supernatural—or at least strange—phenomena across America. Sullivan’s quest turns personal, taking him from the halls of the Vatican, where Pope John Paul II counts himself among Medjugorje’s numerous believers, to Scottsdale, Arizona, site of America’s largest and most controversial instances of Virgin Mary sightings, culminating an eight-year investigation of predictions of apocalyptic events, false claims of revelation, and the search for a genuine theophony, that is, the ultimate interface between man and God.


About the Author
Randall Sullivan is a contributing editor to both Rolling Stone and Men's Journal. He is the author of The Price of Experience and LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implications of Death Row Records' Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal.


Excerpted from The Miracle Detective : An Investigation of Holy Visions by Randall Sullivan. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The priest chosen by Bishop O’Brien to investigate the events in Scottsdale was Father Ernest Larkin, a Carmelite theologian admired for both his intelligence and his spirituality. As I began the interview I admitted that, no matter how often I heard them feathered or fudged, I still tended to accept three categories of possibility: Either the visionaries were lying, or they were delusional, or they were telling the truth. "Basically, I agree with you," Larkin replied, "but I also think that delusion, which sounds pejorative, needn’t be. People may be telling the truth when they say they see this or that, but they may be unaware that the influence of the environment—which can be very subtle—encourages these experiences. I find it difficult to believe that Mary is standing on the edge of human consciousness, and maybe breaking in every now and then, here or there. The Blessed Mother is in this mysterious realm of Heaven."And there’s no interface between that realm and ours? I asked. "I don’t think so," Larkin answered. So he didn’t believe in any apparitions at all? I asked the priest. "I can’t say that," he admitted. "I believe in Lourdes. I believ! e in Fatima. And I’m very curious about Medjugorje. Something of a profound nature has occurred in each of these places. I don’t know to what extent these are the effect of natural causes and to what extent they are miraculous. It’s almost impossible to know what comes from nature and what comes from grace." We digressed into a discussion of St. John of the Cross; Larkin reminded me that Catholicism’s most famous mystic poet had counseled the faithful to resist all supernatural experiences, even their own. "I really believe that these events send as many people away from religion as they draw near," Larkin said. "Because they seem so bizarre, so much out of the ordinary providence of God." If he went to Medjugorje, Larkin said, "I couldn’t help asking, ‘Why would the Blessed Mother appear here when the world is falling apart everywhere else, also?’" That’s like asking why Jesus would raise Lazarus when there are so many other dead people, I observed. Larkin laughed. "You’re right," he said. "It’s the same question. I have to fall back on my a priori principle that we live in a realm of faith from which there is no escape."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In a tiny, dilapidated trailer in northeastern Oregon, a young woman saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in an ordinary landscape painting hanging on her bedroom wall. After being met with skepticism from the local parish, the Catholic diocese officially placed the matter "under investigation." Investigative journalist Randall Sullivan wanted to know how exactly one might conduct the official inquiry into such an incident, so he set off to interview theologians, historians, and postulators from the Sacred Congregation of the Causes for Saints. These men, dubbed by the author as "miracle detectives," were charged by the Vatican with testing the miraculous and judging the holy. What Sullivan didn't know was that his own investigation would lead from the Vatican in Rome to the tiny village of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where six visionaries had been receiving apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Amid a tapestry of believers, skeptics, and apostates, we meet the compassionate Father Slavko Barbaric, an intellectual priest who is known as the Medjugorje seers' "spiritual director," and the legendary Father Groeschel, who is continually called upon to investigate supernatural -- or at least strange -- phenomena across America. Sullivan's quest turns personal, taking him from the halls of the Vatican, where Pope John Paul II counts himself among Medjugorje's numerous believers, to Scottsdale, Arizona, site of America's largest and most controversial instances of Virgin Mary sightings, culminating an eight-year investigation of predictions of apocalyptic events, false claims of revelation, and the search for a genuine theophony, that is, the ultimate interface between man and God. The Miracle Detective is a gripping investigation into the extraordinary phenomenon of Virgin Mary sightings around the world and the priests and scientists who investigate them, as well as a powerful examination about what constitutes the miraculous in the contemporary world.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

Sullivan, a contributing editor of Rolling Stone, retains a sharp journalistic instinct, and his exhaustive rendering of the Medjugorje story is, if not the best journalistic account of the subject (the Medjugorje literature is too vast to allow a confident claim), certainly the best one I have read. Though he is too dismissive of the political dimensions of Mariology, and in particular of Marian anti-communism (particularly in light of the way Franjo Tudjman used the Medjugorje apparitions in delivering his death blow to the Yugoslav federation), Sullivan brilliantly situates the apparitions within the context of the Balkan war. Amazingly, this makes him something of a pioneer: You could read whole volumes of dopey Medjugorje witnessing without suspecting that the Balkans endured a vicious civil war in the 1990s. — Tim Cavanaugh

Publishers Weekly

In what often reads like a spiritual whodunit, author and Rolling Stone contributing editor Sullivan takes readers on a journey into the labyrinthine world of religious apparitions and miracle investigations. Sullivan's fascination with the subject began in 1994 when he learned of a spiritual phenomenon in his own backyard-the reported apparition of the Virgin Mary in a rundown trailer in eastern Oregon. Intrigued, he did some cursory research about such occurrences and proposed to his publisher to do a book on "miracle detectives." He began in Rome, where he met with Catholic Church officials charged with investigating such phenomena, and proceeded to the village of Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia, where the Virgin reportedly first appeared to six young people in 1981. It was in Medjugorje that Sullivan encountered an unexpected turn in his investigation-a personal religious experience in which a mysterious young woman came to his aid as he made a pilgrimage up the mountain of Krizevac. This and his subsequent spiritual encounters make for an interesting subplot as Sullivan continues his quest to explain the unexplainable, though he never fully discloses the details of where those experiences led him. Much has been written about Marian apparitions, particularly those at Medjugorje, but The Miracle Detective may well emerge as one of the most comprehensive and engaging modern works on the subject. Well told and expertly researched, Sullivan's book should appeal to skeptics and believers alike. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Men's Journal, Sullivan (The Price of Experience) presents a wide-ranging work about apparitions of the Virgin Mary. He investigates several of these personally, visiting the sites and interviewing the seers and other principals. Most notably, he examines sightings in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where six teenagers claim to have received messages from the Virgin Mary. In addition to providing a very detailed account of the first Medjugorje sightings, Sullivan includes interviews with Vatican officials charged with determining the authenticity of this event, a short history of religion in the Balkans, a heartrending look at that region during the wars of the 1990s, and descriptions of the effects of his investigations on his own spiritual life. His writing is very descriptive, and the many characters he encounters are well drawn. He provides an annotated list of sources for the Medjugorje section but does not, for the most part, tie the details he gives to specific sources. Sullivan, who treads the path between true believer and outright denier, raises thoughtful, informed questions about the phenomena he studies. Anyone with an interest in Marian apparitions should read this book. Recommended for public and seminary libraries.-Stephen Joseph, Butler Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Pittsburgh Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews