Webfeed
Ireland: Shrine proves a test of faith for bishops
Viewpoint
Wednesday November 11th 2009
In his Ireland diary, Henry McDonald reports on how a shrine in County Mayo has become a focal point for divisions between the church hierarchy and the most fervent of the faithful
• Comment on this article
Wednesday November 11th 2009
Waiting for a sign...the crowd outside Knock basilica, with the sky reflected in glass. Photograph: Peter Morrison/AP
For a place that Irish Catholics have revered since the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared there in 1879, the shrine at Knock in County Mayo has suddenly become a focal point for divisions between the church hierarchy and the most fervent of the faithful.
Despite warnings to stay away by the local archbishop, nearly 10,000 believers flocked to the village earlier this month after a Dublin-based mystic predicted that the Virgin would appear in the sky above the shrine. The gathering, with thousands staring towards the sun, was akin to a mass astronomical observation with stargazers looking for an eclipse or a comet. Regardless of fears that the events predicted by clairvoyant Joe Coleman would ultimately undermine their faith, thousands are preparing for another apparition next month.
As the throng peered towards the sky at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon – the exact time Coleman prophesied that Mary would appear – an empty buggy pram crashed on to the ground. Someone shouted out: “It’s a sign, it’s a sign!” Such was the fervour of expectation amid the believers at Knock. Others saw the sun dancing and witnessed patterns peeking out from the clouds that resembled a woman’s shape.
Coleman, a self-proclaimed visionary of Our Lady, refused to disclose a message Mary was meant to have conveyed to him. The Dubliner said he would reveal it at a later stage, perhaps at the next predicted apparition on 5 December.
Only 4,000 people were supposed to have turned up and yet more than double that number had arrived at Knock by the morning. The trouble for the church is that if its leaders continue to pour scorn on Coleman’s visions, and more importantly on his followers, they risk alienating Irish Catholicism’s most devout.
Moreover, the church is in a double-bind over Knock, given its own enthusiasm for promoting the shrine through the decades. The village, in one of the bleakest and most economically depressed corners of the west of Ireland, became famous across the Catholic world in 1879 after 12 locals reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary, her earthly husband St Joseph and other saints on the wall of their parish church. These original visions prompted a cult of Marian devotion that has been followed faithfully through three centuries.
The late Pope John Paul II, himself a long-time devotee of the Marian cult, regarded Knock as a special place. He celebrated mass there in front of thousands during his 1979 tour of Ireland, awarding the shrine a papal stamp of approval.
Back in the late 19th century, sceptics questioned the testimony of the Knock visionaries, saying that they were victims of a trick of the light. Or rather lights. It is alleged that a local officer in the Royal Irish Constabulary used a series of magic lanterns he owned to project images on the main wall of the village church. It was these images, sceptics have insisted, that conned the 12 villagers into thinking they were seeing the Virgin and her companions.
The obvious question that has been posed to the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland is why should Coleman’s visions be any less authentic than those of superstitious, deeply devout rural peasants in the 19th century?
Without the presence of the shrine, Knock would be a forgotten rural backwater. There are 12 souvenir shops, all of which are named after saints and sell religious artefacts ranging from plastic bottles for pilgrims to fill up with holy water from the nearby shrine to giant statues of the Virgin Mary, Christ and the Italian stigmatic saint Padre Pio. The shops also have more worldly goods on offer, including Knock stick-of-rock in pink and the green, white and gold of the Irish tricolour, and packets of toy “combat zone” soldiers.
Other businesses such as The Shrine bed and breakfast depend on the pilgrimage season that runs from around June until the end of September. The arrival of Coleman’s devotees has been a welcome out-of-season boost for trade.
Among the believers the most striking impression is one of deep and genuine faith in Coleman’s prediction as well as an enduring love for the Virgin Mary. The last period of modern Irish history you could compare this phenomenon to is the 1980s, when a series of holy statues all over Ireland were allegedly seen to move.
Perhaps it was no accident that the summer of the moving statues occurred in 1985, a year marked by mass unemployment and the emigration of Ireland’s youth to the UK, North America, Europe and Australia. Perhaps it is also no accident that this latest outbreak of mass religious fervour has broken out when the economy of the Celtic Tiger is once again mired in recession and rising unemployment.
Submit article to the following: 
|
del.icio.us
|
Newsvine
