I’m stumped at how people can look at this stump of a tree and see the Virgin Mary in it.
Workmen made the discovery after cutting down trees at Holy Mary Parish Church in Rathkeale, County Limerick. Scores of people have since gathered there to pray.
Local shopkeeper Seamus Hogan said that a petition calling for the stump to be left there has been signed by hundreds of villagers and visitors.
“People have been coming from Kerry and Clare to see this tree, which we believe shows a clear outline of Our Lady,” he said
Looks like a wood shaped blob, to me.
“It’s doing no harm and it’s bringing people together from young and old to black and white, Protestant and Catholic, to say a few prayers. So what’s wrong with that?”
But parish priest Father Willie Russell has urged people not to worship the tree.
“There’s nothing there . . . it’s just a tree . . . you can’t worship a tree,” he told a local radio station.
I applaud Russell’s sense here. He’s not promoting something so retarded as all that. Nevermind that he eats the implied body of Jesus every mass and drinks his blood besides… that’s real religion, right there. Heaven forbid they go all pagan and start worshipping nature instead of the real virgin Mary. Talk about cuckoo.
A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Limerick said its reaction to the discovery was “one of great scepticism”.
Despite the Church’s reticence, it seems the petition will eventually be successful.
Noel White, who sits on Rathkeale Community Council’s graveyard committee, told reporters that the stump will stay.
“Nature has a funny way of showing things up and let it be a freak of nature or something else, whatever it is, surely it is a wonderful thing to see so many people coming out to pray.
“Maybe this is Our Lady’s way of getting people back to the church.”
A prayer vigil was held at the stump on Thursday night where locals have erected a temporary shrine.
It’s stories like this for why, by and large, I think religion has to go the way of the dodo. There’s nothing miraculous here except the lengths to which humans will delude themselves.
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New Humanist Blog also wrote about this today.
