THE MEDIA MADE KNOCK AND THE CHURCH GOT ON THE BANDWAGON
A risen people achieve their own miracle by
Ronnie O’Gorman
Galway Advertiser, August 27, 2009.
An unusual feature of the apparition at Knock on August 21 1879, was that it was
silent. On all other occasions when the Virgin Mary has appeared, a verbal
message was imparted to the visionaries. It was usually an exhortation to pray.
But the Knock vision, consisting of Mary, St Joseph, St John the Evangelist, and
other religious images, was motionless. There was no verbal message.
By an extraordinary coincidence the apparition coincided with an explosion of
popular feeling at the injustice of the landlord system. It was a system which
effectively kept the tenant in shackles, and beholden to the landlord for his
survival. But in the summer of 1879 Mayo tenant farmers bravely stood up against
what was the accepted way of life on the land. There were ‘monster’ rallies and
marches; and in some cases landlords and their agents were murdered, their
buildings burnt, their animals maimed. But the Land League, established in
Castlebar two months after the apparition, channelled that anger into effective
peaceful protest and parliamentary reform.
The apparition lasted about three hours and was witnessed by more than 12 local
people. There are various interpretations suggested why these two particular
saints accompanied the Virgin. It is generally accepted that they were saints
whose chastity made them role models in post famine Ireland, where the archaic
land system further burdened people by requiring the postponement of marriage,
making personal chastity an economic as well as a religious virtue.
While the Mayo people were gathering their energy of defiance against
landlordism, whose protest was to grow into a national movement, thousands were
rushing to the gable end of the church in Knock, marvelling at the miracle that
had occurred. Was the vision a sign of support for the unrest in the county, for
the just demands of the people? Or was it an affirmation of the Church which had
condemned the movement and its leadership from its inception? Because the vision
was silent, its interpretation, and its ‘ownership’ was up for grabs.
The one hundred Masses
One of the factors which allowed the church control the impact of the apparition
related to archdeacon Cavanagh himself, the parish priest of Knock. Remember he
was bitterly criticised for his condemnation of the Land Movement. A ‘monster’
meeting was held in Knock as a protest against his attack the previous June.
Furthermore, the editor of the local paper The Connaught Telegraph, James Daly,
represented a new kind of threat to the clergy. Daly was economically
independent, and educated enough to challenge the priests on their behaviour,
and lack of support for the plight of the tenant farmer. But although Daly could
write stinging editorials, when it came to reporting the apparition, the priests
retained the upper hand. Archdeacon Cavanagh and his curate Fr Bourke
monopolised the presentation of the apparition to the press. Reporters could
only access the witnesses that they selected.
One of the witnesses, caught up in the excitement of it all was Mary Beirne. She
was very religious, and blessed with a natural ability to speak about her
experience. She let it be known that the Archdeacon began a special series of
100 Masses shortly after the conflict with the land agitators. He had just
completed his 100th Mass when the apparition happened. What greater proof could
Mary Beirne need that the apparition was none other than a heavenly sign
affirming and validating the embattled priest? Many of the other visionaries
were related to Mary Beirne, and all were devoted to the Church. To them there
was no contest.
MacHale’s history
But perhaps the authority of Archbishop John MacHale, his great standing with
the Irish community at home and abroad, ensured that the apparition was a firm
validation of the Church’s stand against the Land Movement (and later it was to
adopt an ‘I told you so’ attitude when the scandal of Parnell’s affair with
Kitty O’Shea rocked conservative Ireland). He could be quite tyrannical when he
felt his authority was being challenged, be it from other religious and
certainly not from lay people. In Eugene Hynes’ interesting book* he lists some
of the battles that the archbishop fought and won, including his opposition the
declaration of the Pope’s infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870.
Around the same time he resisted moves by most of the Irish bishops that led to
a Papal condemnation of Fenianism. He defied the Roman authorities, including
the Pope, in refusing to discipline the ‘Fenian priest’ Fr Patrick Lavelle. He
considered the ‘Apostle of Temperance’, Fr Matthew, ‘a vagabond friar’, and
absolved those who had taken his life-long pledge against alcohol from keeping
it. He simply refused to allow the Sisters of Mercy in his diocese to attend a
conference of their order called to discuss the nuns’ relationship with
Episcopal authority. Archbishop MacHale simply did not compromise. Even his own
nephew admitted that as MacHale aged, his ‘unwillingness to cooperate...became a
settled state of mental conviction’.
Given MacHale’s history it is not surprising that when he believed the Land
Movement was a challenge to his authority and his priests, and the protests
against his condemnation manifested itself in parades in Knock and Tuam, that he
wrote publicly castigating the leaders as a ‘few strolling men’.
The Land League, however, was the first mass movement in the rural west started
by lay people without priests being involved at its inception. It did not have
the blessing of the church, nor was it able to claim that the apparition at
Knock was a sign in its favour; nevertheless it went on to be a remarkably
successful agitation. It was a miracle of sorts**.
[My comment: Was the economic turn-out a coincidence? A powerful
incentive was made for Knock people to lie or at least not tell the truth.
McHale's dishonesty did a lot to raise the profile of the miracle claims.
Mary McConnell nee Beirne was the star witness. What she had to say was
not checked against what others would concurrently say. And her account
grew with the telling. Some suggest that the bishop seen in the vision was
McHale himself. For some reason the bishop was made out to be St John
owing to an alleged resemblance to a statue of John in Westport. Did the
statue exist? Where did it go? Why would a statue that was in a previous
parish of the Archdeacon's be seen at Knock? Why did nobody think the
bishop was St Patrick?]
NOTES
* Knock - The Virgin’s Apparition in Nineteenth -Century Ireland, by Eugene
Hynes, a detailed reconstruction of troubled times in Mayo, and the miracle at
Knock. There are many strands in this scholarly book, I have merely touched on a
few. Published by Cork University Press, on sale at €49.
**Within decades of the League’s foundation, through the efforts of William
O’Brien and George Wyndham ( a descendant of Lord Edward FitzGerald), the Land
Purchase Acts of 1885 and 1903 allowed Irish tenant farmers to buy their
freeholds with British government finance over 40 years through the Land
Commission (an arrangement that has never been possible in Britain).
For agricultural labourers DD Sheehan and the Irish Land and Labour Association
secured help from the Liberal government elected in 1905 to pass The Labourers
(Ireland) Act 1906, and The Labourers (Ireland) Act 1911, which paid to build
40,000 new cottages. By 1914 the vast majority of Irish land and rural housing
was in the hands of small and middle sized farmers, not the large landowners.
Often the holdings were described as ‘uneconomic’, but the overall sense of
social justice was undeniable.