Strange Occurrences or Tricks at Knock Mayo 1879 Apparition?

In a village of about a dozen homes and a Parish Church called Knock in Mayo, Ireland, an "apparition" was reported. Many suspect a strange occurrence maybe but such things are not uncommon.  Many more suspect exaggeration and tricks.
 
On the night of the 21st of August 1879 the Virgin Mary flanked by St Joseph and a bishop thought to be St John the Evangelist and an altar with a lamb and cross on it allegedly appeared on the gable wall of the Parish Church for a few hours. Fifteen people witnessed the vision including a child of five and stood watching it for two hours allegedly in torrential rain.
 
The suspicion of fraud and trickery was there from the very start. The most popular natural explanation is that a projector, called a magic lantern in those days, was deployed.  It may not matter so much how the vision or illusion is explained as how the witnesses and those who took up their cause were less than truthful.  For example, testimonies were written down and published in heavily altered and embellished form and the witnesses said absolutely nothing about this horrid deception.  Neither did "saintly" Archdeacon Cavanagh who became a one man crusade for the authenticity of the "miracle".

There is no evidence that any original account said the entities seen were anything other than immobile statues.  What survives says there was no sign of life.

Witness Patrick Beirne made the following declaration before a priestly board of investigators of the apparition in 1932.  Notice how he backs off from saying that Mary and Joseph and John actually appeared.

"I saw three figures on the gable surrounded by wonderful light. They appeared to be something like shadows or reflections cast on a wall on a moon-lit night. I approached nearer the gable and passed my hand along the wall to find there was no material substance there. The figures were towards the left hand side of the gable. The figures were those of the Blessed Virgin in the central position; to the right of the Blessed Virgin was St Joseph, and to the left was a figure suggested by a bystander to represent St John the Evangelist. To the right of the group, and at a higher level was a figure of a lamb in a reclining position and facing the figures. I spent between twenty minutes and a half an hour there when I returned home."

There were visions and lights by many reported after the event.  This one is just picked out and concentrated on.  The story loses its shine if too many visions were happening to too many different people.  In 1880, in an interview with the Weekly News star Witness Mary Beirne stated the following.
 
She claimed that three or four times since the apparition, she saw stars come out of the gable and form a light like the moon but she saw nothing else. She was prone then to seeing visions. Had she seen a crude light at the gable in 1879 that stayed for a while it is easy to picture her getting carried away and thinking she saw people standing in the light.

Knock has of course been good for the deprived Mayo region it is encased by.  There is an airport and a pilgrimage industry.  There is a basilica.  Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have set their papal foot there.

If Knock is a lie and is protected by lies that shows the unique power of religious ideology to give the lie more shelf-life than it normally would have.  And Knock is not only a lie but a very big one.

Out of honour for the story and belief in the basic integrity of all who publicised Knock and raised it to what it has become, vulnerable people are donating.  People are still going there looking for one of the famous cures none of which has really past any test for being unexplainable never mind miraculous.

Let it stop. 

Search My Site