Catholic Shrines
The episode, “Flight into Terror” of Dermot Morgan’s comic master-series, “Father Ted” is almost entirely set on an aeroplane full of priests and religious returning from a Pilgrimage to the holy shrine at Kilnettle, where Our Lady apparently appeared at the eighteenth hole of a golf course!
The genius of the humour lies in the way that the parody is only marginal. Fr Ted produces a moneybox, from which a plastic statue of Our Lady pops onto the golf course when a coin is deposited and Fr Dougal has procured a talking sticky tape dispenser, which proclaims, “You have used two inches of sticky tape. God Bless You!” Such tat I’m sure can be found somewhere in Lourdes’ myriad souvenir shops. Our Lady does have a habit of instructing the rise of shrines and pilgrim sites to ordinary people in ordinary places usually prone to ordinary bad European weather. Then we come in droves, protecting our candle flames from the howling Mayo winds in Knock, struggling along Walsingham’s Pilgrim’s mile, swinging our rosaries in the drizzle and although I tanned nicely in Lourdes I have been reliably informed that when it rains…IT RAINS.
Perhaps Our Lady has a sense of humour in selecting such hostile environments. I have a sense of dread that she may abandon the continent and head even further afield. If she appears to a Siberian peasant girl instructing her that “Let there be processions in winter for penitence.”, I would fervently pray that the Vatican delay verification of the apparition until after I pass to the next life, although a Siberian winter would probably send me and many sick Pilgrim’s on a fast-track express to the next life.
So come on Mary…appear in Ibiza or Benidorm (the new Gomorrohs). Or the Carribean or Fiji. How about New Zealand?
