Irish Catholics Stare at Sun; Believe Blindness is Miracle

Following a “psychic prediction”, thousands of Irish Catholics, desperate for meaning in their lives, gathered in a churchyard to stare at the sun. Not surprisingly, they experienced visual hallucinations and vertigo, which they declared to be evidence of “a miracle”. Will the church pay for their damaged retinas? Unlikely.

The Irish Times reports that Joe Coleman, a “clairvoyant” (that is, “person with good imagination and willingness to exploit such to the detriment of logic and reason”) predicted that “Our Lady” (that is, “the dead mother of Jesus of Nazareth, who Catholics believe drifts around imprinting her image on tortillas and grilled cheese sandwiches and tree stumps instead of addressing suffering in the world or doing anything useful”) would appear at Knock Shrine in County Mayo, where such apparition was previously recorded in 1879.

Visitors to the shrine stared at the sun and made various claims about what they saw.

John Tunney, from Islandeady, Castlebar, said: “I’m 53 years old and I never seen the sun go like that before. I witnessed the sun go all different colours, yellow, red and green. Then it completely darkened and began shimmering. Sometimes the sun emitted a clean, bright light, then it would darken again.”

Mr Tunney’s wife, Nina, said: “The sun was spinning in the sky. I experienced a feeling of total happiness. It is a feeling I would love to experience again. It was amazing. I felt marvellous.”

Yvonne Rabbitte, from Dunmore, Co Galway, showed other pilgrims a photograph she had taken on her digital camera which showed vivid rays radiating downwards from the sun at the time the image was taken.

Maggie Ahern, from Castlebar, had no doubt that the happenings in Knock were due to “heavenly intervention”.

Only one nonbeliever was present, and he refused to give his name. Fear of retribution, perhaps? Doesn’t wish to be charged with blasphemy, maybe?

“It’s an optical illusion, pure and simple,” one sceptic, who did not wish to be named, said. “Anybody looking at the bright sun long enough would begin to imagine things.”

Related articles:

1. Knock Shrine Apparition Miracle: Solar Retinopathy
2. Video: Irish Catholics Give New Meaning to "Virgin Timber"
3. Unlike in U.S., for Irish President secular values trump religious dogma
4. Pray4Trig Seeks Miracle to Prove God's Existence to World
5. The Humanist Miracle

Mike Daniels is co-editor of Secular News Daily.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry.