The duel between the Catholic Church in the form of Archbishop Neary and clairvoyant Joe Costello continues. The Archbishop has claimed that Coleman’s predictions risk misleading god’s people and undermining the faith but the clairvoyant continues to attract large crowds.
A letter in last Wednesday’s Irish Times provides the funniest but most accurate response to the controversy.
Madam,
I’m a little confused that the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, is discouraging people from gathering at Knock to witness apparitions which he believes “risk misleading God’s people and undermining faith”.
This is the the same “faith” that believes that a cosmic Jew who was his own father by a virgin can enable you to live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh, drink his blood and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from something invisible called your soul that is present because a woman made from a rib was convinced by a talking snake to eat an apple from a magical tree.
Yours etc,
Liam Meehan,
La Vista Avenue,
Killester, Dublin 5.
Back in July, when another bunch of halfwits were worshipping a tree stump in Limerick, a spokesman for the Limerick diocesan office came out with what must be a contender for quote of the year….
“While we do not wish in any way to detract from devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition.”