notes on apparitions

1. The phenomenon of claimed apparitions of supernatural beings has been present in some form within the experience of Christians for many centuries.
2. A proliferation of claimed apparitions featuring the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, has occurred over the past two centuries.
3. The preponderance of known claimed apparitions of Mary seem to have occurred to Catholics or to people within Catholic influenced cultures.
4. The Catholic Church has never formally requested or required of those who wish to consider themselves Catholic that they should believe in any claimed apparition of Mary or of anyone else.
5. The most significant claimed apparitions of Mary, and therefore the ones most worthy of investigative scrutiny, in my opinion are: The Rue De Bac (Paris France 1830's), La Salette (France 1848), Lourdes (France 1850's), Champion Wisconsin (USA), Pontmain (France 1870's), Knock (Ireland 1870's), Fatima (Portugal 1917), Beauraing, Banneux, Harlem (Netherlands 1950's), Syracusa (Sicily 1950's), Zeitoun (Egypt 1960's and 1970's), Akita (Japan 1970's), Kibeho (Rwanda Africa 1980's), and Medjugorje (1980's to present day).
6. The claimed apparitions at Garabandal in Spain in the 1960's are also worthy of study with a weather eye on the possibility of fraud or of little girls self hypnotising. Any lessons learned from Garabandal should be borne in mind in the consideration of other apparitions involving small children or teenage girls.
7. The possibility of a supernatural causality, (either in the form of presence of the forces of good or the forces of evil), should not be ruled out in any genuine enquiry into any claimed apparition.
8. The Catholic Church has recommended,with greater and lesser conviction, various apparitions as worthy of belief. As previously stated the Church has never demanded or requested of its adherents that they believe in any claimed apparition.
9. I use the phrase "greater conviction" and "lesser conviction" to differentiate the Church's recommendations of different apparitions. The "recommendation with greater conviction" would arise where a broad coalition of senior figures within the Church have pronounced positively over many years on a particular apparition. This has happened at Lourdes and Fatima.
10. The "recommendation with lesser conviction" in my view correctly describes positive recommendations of an apparition which have largely stemmed from a single local Bishop with a possible vested interest in promoting the apparition as genuine. This has happened at Harlem in the Netherlands, at Akita and at Champion Wisconsin in the USA. Both Harlem and Akita feature a claimed manifestation of Mary under the title Our Lady Of All Nations. Although the recommendations of both have come from local Church investigations, they may still be genuine as may the claimed apparition at Champion Wisconsin. But the possible lack of objectivity of a local endorsement should be taken into consideration in any investigation.
11. Apparitions involving just one claimant might be more easily faked than apparitions involving groups. Two such apparitions are Lourdes and the Rue De Bac. Lourdes has been accompanied by many reports of miraculous healings which are an important part in any consideration of the claims from that site.
12. Among the most interesting claimed group apparitions for me are Pontmain and Beauraing.
13. Fatima should be the starting point for any assessment of the proliferation of apparitions for the past two hundred years.
14. Fatima is of vital interest to any investigator because at one point during the series of claimed apparitions, tens of thousands of people claimed to have witnessed the sun dancing around the sky and rushing towards the earth.
15. Among the attested witnesses of the claimed solar event at Fatima, were atheists and reporters for the communist newspaper O Secolo.
16. The massive amount of supposed eye witness testimony affirming that some sort of extraordinary solar event occurred at Fatima during a claimed apparition of Mary by three children in October 1917, makes this the primary apparition of the past two hundred years.
17. If Fatima is fake, I'm inclined to think they're all fake.
18. If Fatima is truly an intervention by Mary, through the grace of God, some of the other claimed apparitions may be real.
19. The Catholic Church remains reluctant to issue a final opinion on the ongoing claims of apparitions from Medjugorje.
20. The Catholic Church has refrained from making any statement on the claimed apparitions at Zeitoun in Egypt which are alleged to have taken place from 1968 to 1971, and to have been witnessed by tens of thousands of people. The attestation for Zeitoun is interesting though not as formidable in an evidentiary sense as Fatima. The claimed events at Zeitoun involved bright light phenomena and an apparent human figure walking on the curved domes of a church building. The events took place at night. It would be necessary for any investigation to eliminate the possibility of a contrived light show being used to deceive the supposed tens of thousands of witnesses. If this possibility can be excluded, Zeitoun becomes very interesting indeed. The Catholic Church has chosen not to comment on Zeitoun out of respect for the Egyptian Coptic Church. In the event that the Egyptian Coptic Church unifies with the Catholic Church, we could expect a Catholic Church opinion to be published on the claimed events at Zeitoun.

a word on behalf of our sponsor

Ah thank you God for the sweet softness of dawn glistening on the fields with the Wicklow mountains all robed in purple, the sky tinged ochre gold, and the leaves of every tree in Urquahart's woods reflecting a thousand nameless shades of living light.
Thank you God for the morning breeze whispering verses from the Bible in the garden of my father.
Thank you God for the kiss of consciousness as I awoke this royal morning.
Thank you God for the early stir of life in the houses and on the streets of Kilcullen, this burgeoning humming hamlet, with its businessmen, its teachers, its young people, its sages, its radicals, its conformists, its farmers, its shopkeepers, its students, its truants, its hoodlums, its thug policemen, its heroes, its sexors, its idle rich, its unemployed, its pagans, its proselytizers, its poets, and its priests, for all in all, good and bad, this is my Jerusalem, and I could ask you for no other.
Thank you God for the roses.
Thank you God for Paddy Pup hiding in the bedroom every time I put on a rasher because he's afraid I'm going to set off Father Peter's smoke alarm.
Thank you God for Siobhan Cullen's young lad Robert saying to his mother "How many times did James win the Nobel prize?" and Lord what a great kid.
Thank you God for distant melodies from Maharashtra.
Thank you God for Bella Donna's bright eyes, flowing hair and intriguing tee shirt slogans.
Thank you God for the sound of wood pigeons cooing in the trees.
Thank you God for Sister Lelia's card which said "go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you have imagined."
Thank you God for the moment when I told Vivian Clarke that I was going to invite the nuns to my play and he responded "Are you mad or what?"
Thank you God for the open road with Esmerelda's engine purring like a cat and the sudden suspicion in my mind that anything is possible.
Thank you God for the gentle cadences of memory and the presence in my heart of people long gone.
Thank you God for Summer rain.
Thank you God for the bumble bee's drone which is in its way a song of praise.
Thank you God for letting me overhear Nuala Egan and Siobhan Patterson from behind a curtain in Kilcullen theatre last week when Nuala was saying "If neither of us talk to James he can't put us in his column," and Siobhan answering "Right so, we'll be like the politicians, as soon as we see him coming we'll say no comment," and Lord bless their innocence.
Thank you God for the shadows brooding on the field of souls where my grandfather rests at last.
Thank you God for Beata from Lithuania who responds to all my complaints about every situation by saying "You must be strong, it's a life test," and I really think she isn't afraid of anything, and maybe it's something to do with the fact that the Lithuanians survived the Nazis, and then saw off the Soviets, or maybe it isn't, but there's no going back in them, and crumbs Lord she's the toughest pretty girl I've ever met.
Thank you God for the inspired words "Jesus you are perfect love and perfect love casts out fear."
Thank you God for Pauline Moore saying: "The Lord doesn't tell you to throw in the towel, he tells you to cast out your nets," and Marie O'Connell giving me the prayer: "Jesus I love you, God I love you, Lord forgive me, Lord heal me," and Anne Byrne advising: "Be the eucharist to each other," and Bernadette Ryan proclaiming: "Forgive, forgive, forgive, no matter what, just forgive," and Bernadette Higgins pontificating about divine mercy, and for all the other nut jobs from Kilcullen and Newbridge prayer groups wherever they are and whatever they are doing in this age when satan has sought the ultimate destruction of the Catholic Church, and these few, these precious few, have defied him.
Thank you God for the teenager nicknaming me Professor last week as it does appear to be the first nickname I've acquired that doesn't have a vaguely pejorative ring, and I definitely much prefer it to Yakky, Dracula, Tasmanian Devil, Heeler the Peeler, and all the rest.
Thank you God for the sudden flashes of elemental beauty that illumine our world and show your hand in the creation, you know what I mean, kingfishers o'er the stream, bluebells at the roadside, dolphins on the ocean and little German Mareen anywhere.
Thank you God for the Spanish Onion and her amazing snot green paintings.
Thank you God for my innate genius and sublime modesty.
Thank you God for the bullocks belling out of sight in the heat of evening.
Thank you God for the scent of new mown grass.
Thank you God for the tide of night sweeping in on raven's wings and gathering up my town in a cloak of stillness while the universe itself watches with bated breath.
Thank you God for the stars scattered like precious stones across the vastness of sky.
Thank you God for the moment when we were performing "Poets In Paradise" for inmates at the Curragh Prison, and I suggested to Maurice O'Mahoney who was portraying Patrick Kavanagh, that he should sing A Boy Named Sue instead of Raglan Road, which was an hilarious one liner even by my usual superb standards, but of course I didn't say it too loud Lord, for I may be obnoxious but I'm not stupid.
Thank you God for that additionally hilarious moment at the Curragh Prison after the curtain fell, when I was trying to mix it with the prisoners doing my Saint James of Compostela routine, and next minute I noticed all the other cast members and the director proceeding at a rate of knots for the door, and suddenly felt very lonely indeed.
Thank you God for the impossible majesty of created things.
Thank you God for the dignity of creatures.
Thank you God for the miracle of song and the miracle of the singer.
Thank you God for the glory of light.
Thank you God for the writings of the Lutheran Richard Wurmbrand.
Thank you God for the courage of your witnesses.
Thank you God again and again for Sister Gemma, Sister Lelia, Sister Elizabeth, Nirmala, also for the immortal courage of theGalway nun who lost the fingers on one hand after the devil tried to scare her away from being a nun, and for Father Supple, Pete, Dave, Sweeney, and the Pap.
Thank you God for you.

the bus at five o clock

the engine tingles
the seated nation breathes
joe and michael argue politics
whilest a couple of rural misfits mingle
with some servants of the hebrew god
and not a few atheists
tom and jackie on a lover's tryst
giggle only the if and why
are yet unknown to them
whilest i
scrawl words
on a journey to kildare
through a dark forgotten corner
of an exploding world
scrawl words
on the fly leaf of a book
for in the coming tempest
such frail things may endure
and monuments of bronze
be rendered dust

garbo speaks

A phone caller purporting to be Paedophile Ian O'Doherty (so called since he falsely, maliciously and malignly claimed in the pages of the Anti Catholic Irish Independent that the Catholic Church is itself a paedophile ring) left a message on my voicemail today.
The caller purporting to be Paedophile Ian O'Doherty said the following word for word:

"You f--king pr--k. You write one more thing about me, I am going to take everything you have. I am personally going to break every f--king finger in your f--ken body. Okay?"

Well folks.
That was the entire message.
Breaking every finger in someone's body is apparently considered the height of panache down drugville way.
Thankfully he's not threatening to break the fingers outside my body.
But I liked the way he finished with "okay."
As if subconciously seeking my approval.
I haven't gotten a message like that from someone purporting to be Paedophile Ian O'Doherty since the morning of my mother's funeral over a year ago.
The message left by someone purporting to be Paedophile Ian O'Doherty the morning of my mother's funeral contained more explicit threats of violence.
Yeah.
More explicit than the semi coherent "breaking every finger in my body."
At the time many of us wondered could the person purporting to be Paedophile Ian O'Doherty really have deliberately timed his death threats to coincide with my mother's funeral.
Or was the timing just a happy coincidence.
I mean such an action would go beyond craven cowardice.
It would be low.



(First published 12th April 2012.)

birth and dying

armies were marching
through the low lands in winter
when she ran through the fields
to her only love

bleak were the hedgerows
the fastnesses lonely
the wind took their whispering
and gave it the wilds

the wilds took their whispering
and made it a song
of dreams that are broken
and dreams yet to be

her footsteps returned
to the place of her growing
and she slept like an angel
though armies were marching

the evil that men do

The anti Catholic Independent Newspapers group ran an article in yesterday's Irish Independent which sought to exculpate discredited RTE journalistic bigot Aoife Kavanagh for her dissemination on national television and radio of false claims stating that Father Kevin Reynolds had raped a little African girl and had fathered a child by that little African girl.
To create this slander, which in my view amounted to attempted murder both of a reputation and of a person, Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE had paid an undisclosed sum of public money to an African woman to say she had been raped in childhood by Father Reynolds.
Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE also paid the African woman an undisclosed sum of public money to say she had given birth to a child by Father Reynolds.
Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE also refused to allow Father Reynolds to take a paternity test prior to their broadcast to the nation on television and radio of the lies they had paid the African woman to tell about him.
That's Aoife Kavanagh.
That's her friends.
That's RTE and its kulturkampf against the Catholic Church.
Yesterday's Irish Independent carried a statement purportedly by an RTE staffer, praising Aoife Kavanagh unreservedly.
Strangely the statement praising Aoife Kavanagh unreservedly was anonymous.
If the statement praising Aoife Kavanagh unreservedly was genuine, if someone really said it, why would they be afraid to set their name to it?
The supposed statement by a supposed RTE staffer supposesdly  said: "Aoife Kavanagh doesn't spend all day sitting around drinking coffee. If you give her a story to cover, an hour later she'll have made an unbelievable number of phone calls."
Hmmm.
I ask you gentle readers.
Is Independent Newspapers trying to get at me with that comment?
No seriously.
I am the most famous journalist in Ireland for sitting around doing nothing except drinking coffee.
Could the heroes at Independent House really be taking side swipes at me in this way while praising a deeply corrupt hate filled invidiously anti Catholic bitch like Aoife Kavanagh?
The possibility is not as remote as it might seem to sane or decent people.
We are not dealing with sane or decent people when we discuss Independent Newspapers.
I ask you.
Consider this.
Independent Newspapers contributor Paedophile Ian O'Doherty, so called because he once falsely maliciously and malignly claimed in the Irish Independent that the Catholic Church is a paedophile ring, two weeks ago attempted to identify me to his readers in his column in the Irish Independent, falsely maliciously and malignly claiming I was an anonymous blogger, falsely maliciously and malignly claiming I had called him a paedophile, falsely maliciously and malignly concealing from his readers his own previous false malicious and malign designation of the Catholic Church as a paedophile ring in his column in the Irish Independent, falsely maliciously and malignly concealing the fact that I have always made clear that the sole reason I refer to him as Paedophile Ian O'Doherty is because of this false malicious and malign public assertion which he made falsely maliciously and malignly in the Irish Independent that the Catholic Church is a paedophile ring, and falsely maliciously and malignly likening me to an anonymous racist blogger on the internet who had been imprisoned for making racist remarks about a heart attack victim.
In the same more recent column, having attempted to identify me to his readers without using my name, he also threatened me with an unspecified suprise.
Independent Newspapers didn't carry the Paedophile Ian O'Doherty column for about ten days after I went ballistic about this latest false malicious and malign attempt by Paedophile Ian O'Doherty to falsely maliciously and malignly smear me.
Paedophile Ian O'Doherty's column was restored late last week.
The same day someone purporting to be Paedophile Ian O'Doherty left a message on my answering machine threatening "to take everything you have," and adding "I'm gonna break every f--ken finger in your f--ken body."
Quaint.
A year ago, on the morning of my mother's funeral, a similar and more extensive message, was left on my answering machine by someone purporting to be Paedophile Ian O'Doherty, threatening to kill me.
Now.
This is the calibre of staff at Independent Newspapers.
This is the behaviour we have come to expect of them.
This is the sort of people they are.
Of course it's easier for them to terrorise ageing priests, nuns and Bishops than it is for them to terrorise me.
And I gotta say.
On a point of information
Independent Newspapers needs to understand that I'm from a wing of the Catholic Church that's a bit iffy about turning the other cheek.
Nothing in the Bible may be used as a justification for tyrants.
Or for the neo feudalism of the O'Reilly family, proprietors of Independent Newspapers.
I'm just saying.
Anyone trying to break my fingers is apt to get their hair mussed.
If he has any.
But I digress.
I ask you again gentle travellers of the internet.
Was Independent Newspaper's supposed quotation claiming RTE bigot Aoife Kavanagh didn't waste her time all day drinking coffee, actually directed at me?
Or am I just paranoid?
Bear in mind that paranoia would be a reasonable response when one is receiving voicemail messages from people purporting to be members of staff at Independent Newspapers, threatening to break one's fingers or to kill one or to suprise one in some other mysterious arcane unspecified way.
Back to Aoife Kavanagh.
Independent Newspapers has entirely missed the point with their manufactured quotation about Aoife Kavanagh from a supposed RTE staffer who supposedly doesn't want to be named.
No one has criticised Aoife Kavanagh for drinking coffee.
No one has suggested that she is a slow worker.
Let's remind ourselves of precisely what Aoife Kavanagh did and then decide if her non drinking of coffee and her prodigious quickness at making phone calls, is a mitigating factor.
Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE paid an African woman an undisclosed sum of public money to say that the African woman had been raped in childhood by Father Kevin Reynolds.
Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE paid the African woman an undisclosed sum of public money to say she had given birth to a child, while still herself a child, to Father Kevin Reynolds.
Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE have failed to produce recordings or contemporary notes of their initial interviews with the African woman whom they paid to falsely accuse Father Kevin Reynolds of raping her and fathering a child with her while she herself was still a child.
Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE refused to allow Father Kevin Reynolds to take a paternity test prior to their broadcasting of the lies about Father Kevin Reynolds which Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE had paid the African woman to say.
Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE would have gotten away with it if they had contented themselves with paying the woman to make a false rape allegation against Father Kevin Reynolds.
There would have been no way for Father Kevin Reynolds to refute their lies.
They got greedy.
They went for broke.
And threw in the additional lie about him fathering a child by a child he had raped.
Now.
Does this crass, invidious and outrageously criminal behaviour by Aoife Kavanagh and her friends at RTE, leave us with an option of considering her a qualitative journalist?
Does her dislike for coffee and her ability to hold prodigious phone conversations in the space of an hour make up for the fact that she and her friends at RTE tried to frame a priest for child rape?
You know what folks.
I don't think it does.
And ever more clearly day by day, the law is ceasing to exist in the Republic of Ireland.