The papal surprise:
Fisher, Desmond
selves isolated from their followers by pressure of events, ably entangled with politics. Would a visit by the Pope help to events like those mentioned above, and have had to beat a ...
...The conventional expla- prized by interior decorators, or other- time and labor...
...tract house from first arrival of the logging and sugaring...
...The long delay in In fact, the most interesting aspect of the reaction to the answering had convinced them that the visit was not scheduled announcement of the Papal visit is how muted general reaction for this year...
...The average might have stones were dragged to the side of the but work and you had to put the things been a couple of thousand dollars a year...
...crowds ever seen in Ireland (the present record is shared In proposing an itinerary, the immediate question was between the Dublin Eucharistic Congress in 1932 and the mass whether a visit to Northern Ireland should be included...
...chapel, where statues represent the apparition, are the magniAnd always the burning question-would the Pope visit ficent new buildings of the shrine-rest homes and accommoNorthern Ireland...
...Paisley...
...But the figures were so real play them up now...
...firmness that he had shown in Poland...
...The Irish church has tried to play dimensional figures-for nearly two hours...
...When it was sprung on them, they had nothing has been...
...A farm of a hundred and fifty acres got along by keeping chickens and pigs, were then used to build wall...
...Ireland...
...Would a visit by the Pope help to events like those mentioned above, and have had to beat a heal a decade of "troubles," with 2,000 dead and 20,000 hasty retreat back behind the old slogans of loyalist domina- injured, or would it precipitate greater violence still...
...A 19-week postal strike, petrol shortages and electricity But it is in the North, too, that religion has become inextric- blackouts were more immediate concerns...
...First, themselves to three main points: (1) the Pope is honoring they were taken by surprise...
...Most were small operations, mom...
...Once more vigilante movement to stop it...
...no message was given...
...tional aspects of the shrine...
...The crisis there, with its religious connota- dations for the sick, offices and a major basilica which can tions, is the most significant reality in Ireland today...
...Picking stone is a mantled for their weathered siding, must have required a heavy investment of seasonal chore...
...Its raison dare was not obvious...
...John, appeared-all of them as solid, three- Ireland...
...They had issued their invitation to Ireland by his visit...
...And the UFF say it is just the beginning...
...Were the bishops using the Pope's known that some of the old women tried to touch them...
...see them at the base of old foundation You've got to scramble up on all fours...
...the largest ready...
...Of several minds: Thomas P owers around fields, flanking cattle runs, in sheep folds and the like...
...The UDA's band of assassins- Armagh, though for reasons of security and protocol the prowhom they named the Ulster Freedom Fighters in an attempt to posed locations were not announced...
...Knock, County Mayo, on August 21, 1879...
...The size of might have two miles of stone walls and occasionally goats and sheep, along Commonweal: 486...
...Marianism to entice him to Ireland for political or institutional Today, Knock is a thriving center...
...Not everyone in Ireland is comfortable with the devo- Paul 11...
...This has the effect of literally into place...
...One side felt the visit would lic...
...JACK HOLLAND with his bishop, said it was time to call Mr...
...Ironically, it is also likely to be very near the Boyne River have no real significance unless the Pope visited Northern where William of Orange defeated James II's Catholic forces Ireland and handled the political aspect with the same delicate in 1690...
...The North There are several reasons for the comparatively low-key contains the reputed burial place of St...
...Before the announce- not, however, completely ruled out such a visit...
...In a bright light, on the south gable of the little church, the virgin Mary, flanked by St...
...It is a prosperous hamlet in the middle of one people are expected...
...You You can't walk up the hill...
...church split his flock by saying he would decline any invitation to meet the Pope...
...On the other side were Meanwhile, the Irish newspapers are playing up the visit as those who feared that a visit to the North would only make hard as they can...
...Their suggested itinerary included It has happened again...
...If it does not ment was a week old, what had been described, somewhat come off, a compromise has been worked out: the Pope will go disingenuously, as "a pastoral visit to the Irish church," had to a part of the Archdiocese of Armagh which is in the Repubturned into a political tug-of-war...
...The Moderator of the Presbyterian Ireland's Protestants in the last issue of Commonweal...
...it's too steep...
...2) there is (or is not) a chance that he will the Pope last November in the hope that he would visit Ireland include our particular locality in his itinerary...
...He announced that the ten...
...Irish ecclesiastical circles are convinced that the British deliberately engineered the ploy, putting Mrs...
...The rocky fields of New England walls for barns which have burned or How the builders of the wall got the are of course legend, but the farmers caved in beneath the snow or been dis- stones up I don't know, but it certainly speak of a literal crop...
...If because they are no longer needed...
...field on a heavy wooden sled called a somewhere...
...All that Cardinal Tomis mislead the police into thinking they constituted a separate 0 Fiaich of Armagh would say was that a visit to the North was organization-has already struck: a Catholic was gunned not necessarily ruled out...
...Mrs...
...At least squeezing the stone up to the surface, might have taken a month or six weeks, two were farmed entirely with horses, which is why picking stone is never which is longer than it takes to build a and a couple of the others used horses for done...
...and for 5,000 within a 25-mile radius...
...down in Belfast only two days after the murder of Mountbat- That was enough for Mr...
...Agricultural experts refer to such operastone boat, pulled by oxen...
...North should be excluded...
...Thatcher in a THE POPE'S VISIT to Ireland got off to a bad start...
...Patrick at Armagh, reaction...
...Was the Pope coming mainly to visit is not appearing in this special issue devoted to John Knock...
...Though the event is likely to attract...
...Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, appeared to agree with those who felt the visit to the North should take Report from Ireland place...
...The UFF/UDA visit would not take place, and he immediately launched a know where such beginnings will inevitably lead...
...In the really The amount of work which went into tions as "marginal" or "subsistence" old days-which means more or less up one of the old Vermont farms is hum- farms, and the families that worked them until the turn of the century-the stones bling...
...not justified by the extracts themselves, all of which confined The Irish bishops did not handle things too skilfully...
...On the day of the Pope's None of this uncertainty and doubt has affected the village expected visit, Sunday, September 30, at least one million of Knock itself...
...V ERMONt farmers-such as some of these stones is breathtaking...
...It least a dozen farms along Broad Brook the snow comes late in Vermont the must have taken a day or more to move Road between South Royalton and East ground may freeze down three feet and one of those big old stones and wrestle it Barnard...
...The possibility of the visit had been discussed for which is the primatial see...
...Desmond Fisher is Commonweal's regular correspondent in Joseph and St...
...Out walking in the woods you may come across a fourfoot-high wall in the middle of what appears to be nowhere, running right DEAD FARMS through a mature forest which hasn't been cut over in a hundred years...
...Several dioceses straddle the border...
...How hold a 15,000 congregation...
...No words were down Knock and its reputed miracles for half a century: why spoken...
...fast priest whose progressive views have got him into trouble groove of murder and revenge...
...The meetings held by Daniel O'Connell before Catholic EmancipaCatholic church in Ireland recognizes no frontier between the tion in 1829), it has generated, so far at least, nothing like the 26 counties of the Republic and the 6 counties of Northern euphoria surrounding John F. Kennedy's visit in 1963...
...Desmond Wilson, aBelit seems Northern Ireland is destined to spin in the bloody...
...Cows provided the In the old days-which means more or bulldozer to the final coat of paint...
...From the good light while at the same time making it diplomatically beginning, it was caught up in the politico-religious impossible for the Pope to go to Northern Ireland...
...The bishops decided for...
...Stone cash income on all of these farms, and it less up until the Second World War-the was used because it didn't cost anything wasn't much...
...The headline was on the North...
...3) the Rev...
...nation for the new crop of stone, turned wise disposed of by time and neglect When I was ten or twelve there were at up whenever a field is plowed, is frost...
...Here, a Mayo will cope with the invasion will be a miracle in itself...
...hundred years ago on a rainy August night, fifteen local people DESMOND FISHER claimed to have seen the apparition...
...In a recent issue, the Irish Tunes, offering things worse or that it was, as the Reverend Ian Paisley saw it, extracts from editorials in the provincial weeklies, headed its a plot by Rome and the Dublin government to "foist" the Pope piece: "Ecstasy over coming Papal visit...
...Ian during the celebrations of the centenary of an apparition at Paisley has a nerve to warn the Pope to keep out of the North...
...The papal visit to Poland bad been widely publicized...
...How the twisty, narrow roads of County of Ireland's most neglected and backward counties...
...All round the original purposes...
...remain-speak of the stone crop...
...Paisley's bluff by (Jack Holland wrote on changing attitudes among Northern having a confrontation...
...14 September •1979: 485 But it was the uncertainty about what lay behind the visit Due to space limitations, John Garvey's regular column which caused most of the comparative coolness...
...It seemed inconceivable that the months...
...They have divisions over Northern Ireland...
...Building a barn foundation with only eight or ten milk cows...
...She told the House of Commons that if the Pope wished to visit the United Kingdom (which, of course, includes Northern Ireland), he would be welcome...
...There is room for only 500 could the Pope come to the country without making a signifi- visitors in the houses of the village itself-there is no hotelcant intervention in the crisis...
...I know A LOST INHERITANCE OF ACCUMULATED LABORS of one wall which runs right up a side hill so steep that in effect it forms a wall 60 feet high, the stones piled on top of each other and only leaning against the hill...
...Next day, however, the British Foreign Office announced that the Vatican had THE PAPAL SURPRISE categorically ruled out any trip to Northern Ireland, a stateULSTER NO, KNOCK YES ment subsequently confirmed by a Vatican spokesman...
Vol. 106 • September 1979 • No. 16
