Perhaps foolishly, in light of the coronavirus*, my wife and I got away for a few days to Door County, WI. While there, we visited a Marian shrine.
The state of Wisconsin is a traditional and popular vacation destination for Chicago-area residents like us. The tradition began back in the pre-air-conditioning days; Wisconsin being due north of us, the weather is cooler in the summer. In addition, the state has a lot to offer by way of hunting, fishing, boating and similar pastimes. My family doesn't do any of those outdoor sporting activities, but my wife has taken up hiking, and while I don't share her passion for it (I'd rather hop on a bicycle), I enjoy walking along with her along the trail.
If you look at a map of Wisconsin, you see that its long eastern coastline along Lake Michigan includes a long, narrow peninsula, a sort of "little finger" sticking out into the lake. That finger is Door County. The city of Green Bay is perched at the base of the finger, which forms one side of the bay for which the city is named. Driving up from Chicago, once one has passed through Green Bay, the remainder of Door County is by turns bucolic and rather genteel-touristy.
In addition to providing stunning vistas of the bay, hiking trails, yacht slips, cute shops, microbrews and similar tourist pleasures, Door County offers an additional attraction for Catholics: the National Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, near the tiny hamlet of Champion, WI. The Shrine has been built at the scene of a Marian apparition: the only one approved** by the Catholic church in the United States.
Like Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe and other approved sites, Our Lady of Good Help has both a miraculous founding story and subsequent miracles attributed to the Blessed Mother's intercession. Adele Brise, a young woman who had immigrated to the area from Belgium, experienced a series of three apparitions in 1859. Even though she was accompanied by others on at least one of those occasions, nobody else saw what she saw. She described the appearance of a lady wearing a white gown with a yellow sash. After this happened twice, she asked a local priest what it could mean. He encouraged her to ask the lady the next time she appeared. So
this is what happened on the third occasion the Lady appeared:
... Adele fell on her knees.
" 'In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?’ asked Adele, as she had been directed.
“ ‘I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning, and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession, and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them’
“ 'Adele, who is it?'' said one of the women. 'O why can't we see her as you do?' said another weeping.
“ ‘Kneel,’ said Adele, ‘the Lady says she is the Queen of Heaven.’ Our Blessed Lady turned, looked kindly at them, and said, ‘Blessed are they that believe without seeing. What are you doing here in idleness…while your companions are working in the vineyard of my Son?’
“ ‘What more can I do, dear Lady?’ said Adele, weeping.
“ ‘Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation’
“ ‘But how shall I teach them who know so little myself?’ replied Adele.
“ ‘Teach them,’ replied her radiant visitor, ‘their catechism, how to sign themselves with the sign of the Cross, and how to approach the sacraments; that is what I wish you to do. Go and fear nothing. I will help you.’ "
The manifestation of Our Lady then lifted her hands, as though beseeching a blessing for those at her feet, and slowly vanished, leaving Adele overwhelmed and prostrate on the ground.
After this series of apparitions, Adele and a few companions began living in a religious community as Third Order Franciscans, and the first in a series of chapels was erected on the site of the apparitions. Now fast forward 12 years, to October 1871. The same nights that a great fire burned down much of the city of Chicago, enormous conflagrations also consumed vast tracts of woodland around Peshtigo, Wisconsin and in Michigan. It is now widely thought that a meteorite broke apart as it hurtled through earth's atmosphere, with pieces landing in these three locales and igniting huge and deadly blazes. The shrine lay in the path of the Wisconsin fire. Here is what happened:
When the tornado of fire approached Robinsonville (Champion), Sister Adele and her companions were determined not to abandon the Chapel. Encircled by the inferno, the Sisters, the children, area farmers and their families fled to the Shrine for protection. The statue of Mary was raised reverently and was processed around the sanctuary. When wind and fire threatened suffocation, they turned in another direction to hope and pray, saying the rosary. Hours later, rains came in a downpour, extinguishing the fiery fury outside the Chapel. The Robinsonville area was destroyed and desolate…except for the convent, the school, the Chapel, and the five acres of land consecrated to the Virgin Mary. Though the fire singed the Chapel fence, it had not entered the Chapel grounds. Those assembled at the Chapel, realizing that they had witnessed a miracle, were asked by Sister Adele to retire to the Convent, where they were made as comfortable as possible for the rest of the night.
What’s more, the only livestock to survive the fire were the cattle brought to the Chapel grounds by farmers and their families who came to the Shrine seeking shelter from the firestorm. Though the Chapel well was only a few feet deep, it gave the cattle outside all the water they needed to survive the fire, while many deeper wells in the area went dry. Hence, the Chapel well has been sometimes referred to as the “miraculous well”.
In addition to Adele and her companions escaping the Peshtigo fire, several other miracles have been attributed over the years to the intercession of Our Lady of Good Help. The shrine displays letters from local people who claimed to have been cured of polio, of having been given the ability to walk, and of having been cured of other medical conditions, all as a result of praying at the shrine.
The shrine itself sits amid farmland off a county highway. It consists of a rather modest chapel, a visitor center, a gift shop, a cafe, and several outdoor "walks" (a rosary walk, stations of the cross, and several grottos). The chapel has been built on what is thought to be the site of one of the apparitions, "between a hemlock and a maple". The chapel altar, a picture of which is at the top of this post, is said to sit over the exact spot. Beneath the chapel is an indoor grotto; when one is in the grotto, one is as close to the spot of the Virgin's appearance as it is possible to be today.
On the day we visited, which was a Wednesday about noon time, there weren't many other visitors. While I have never been to any of the European shrines like Lourdes, I am told that these famous spots each have a thriving local industry of gift shops selling religious trinkets and kitsch - Catholic tourism seems to sustain an entire local economy. That is not the case in Wisconsin. The shrine is surrounded by farm fields, and an air of rural quiet pervades the campus. Besides the gift shop on the grounds, the only other evidence we saw of anyone looking to capitalize on the apparitions was a crude handwritten sign (of which I wish I had taken a picture) near the entranceway; the sign offered "apparition soil" for $10. It wouldn't surprise me to learn there are takers.
I have to say that the folks who were there struck me as a rather grim lot. I think Marian spirituality attracts grim Catholics. We arrived while a mass was going on in the chapel; we didn't wish to disturb the attendees (and didn't have much desire to be in a crowded church), so we missed that part of the experience. The indoor grotto includes many statues, racks of holy candles, and other similar Catholic decor. We spent more time in the grotto than anywhere else. Our pastor had asked me to pray for a couple of unspecified special intentions, so I lit a candle and submitted a prayer request card on his behalf.
We stayed about 90 minutes, some of it in tourist mode, some of it in prayer. It was a pretty intensely Catholic place, so much so that it almost troubled me in some ways; I found myself probing my spirituality, trying to assess where it sits in relation to the traditional piety, spirituality and artwork which were all around us.
It may simply have been that I had been "unplugged" for several days while on vacation, and wasn't quite in Marian apparition mode. I'm not really someone who has glommed onto Marian apparitions. Among my prayers today was that I might grow closer to the Blessed Mother.
* As a matter of fact, while we were in Wisconsin, the City of Chicago declared Wisconsin a no-travel zone. So by Chicago's rules, traveling to Wisconsin was permissible when we left, but not permissible when we returned. As I don't live in the City of Chicago, I suppose I'm not bound by the declaration. Nevertheless, the declaration wasn't capricious; it was triggered by the incidence of infections in Wisconsin, whose rate of positive tests is considerably higher than Illinois' at the moment. I did check a map of Wisconsin's infection rates a day or two before leaving, and it appeared Door County wasn't among the state's hottest spots. And fortunately, it wasn't overrun with tourists while we were there. There was one indoor venue, an ice cream scoop shop, where social distancing was problematic (they really need to turn it into a doorway order-and-delivery service rather than forcing customers to crowd around the counter of their small shop), but on the whole, everyone was sensibly distanced, everyone wore masks at the appointed times and places, and all of our dining out was al fresco. And I'm fanatical about hand-washing.
** Our Lady of Good Help is the only Marian shrine in the US whose apparitions have been confirmed by church authorities, but it is not the only American site at which apparitions have been reported. There are several others just in the upper Midwest; I don't know whether anyone has compiled a nationwide list, but I suppose it would easily reach double digits. I am pretty sure that some of them are considerably better-known than this one. And in my experience, all of them have their base of fans, or perhaps I should say, devotees. Church approbation may carry some weight, but doesn't seem decisive in deciding whether or not to patronize a set of apparitions.
People who visit shrines (there are many in the Catholic Upper Peninsula) are often in a bad way. The visit may be the last leg of a novena or last ditch effort to save a loved one who is sick, dying, addicted, lost, or in Purgatory.
ReplyDeleteI always figured that accounted for the grimness.
Jean, good point that the ones visiting a shrine may often be people in dire straits.
DeleteJean, I am sure you're right. Really, all of us have many people and much about ourselves to pray for. But joy does radiate more so from some than others. At this place, I detected a sort of more general vibe of "church militant" which reminded me, at the risk of still another invocation of this phenomenon, of various Church Ladies I have known.
DeletePope Francis highly values the popular piety of Marian devotion.
ReplyDeleteHe has given a good explanation of this in regard to Our Lade of Aparecida, the patroness of Brazil. The finding of a battered, and broken(?) statue of our Lady by some fisherman resulted in the good fortune of that community. Francis explains in almost social psychological terms how the fears, and hopes of the community became projected onto the statue.
Francis claims the success of the Latin America bishops conference Aparecida document (which is an early blueprint of his model of doing church) occurred because the bishops met at the Shrine rather than in some hotel conference center. They were constantly exposed to the piety of the people.
Francis further maintains that popular piety is one of the few areas of the church where clergy and people meet as equals When a statue of Our Lady of Paraguay patroness of one of the slum areas of Buenos Aires arrived in the city, he blessed it at the Cathedral, then quietly slipped into lay street clothes and accompany the triumphant procession back into the barrio.
I think the spirit of voluntarism (neighbor helping neighbor) occupies a similar role in American national piety, it unites people across religious, class and ethnic differences. In my home town when I was growing up the volunteer fire department with its bingos, etc became the social center of our small town. In our parishes food banks, and the Saint Vincent de Paul society are places were people gather to do good for their neighbors. Time and again we see people across all sorts of differences coming together to help people in need. Essentially we have a neighborly national piety rather than a maternal national piety.
I am skeptical of popular piety in the USA by Americans who are NOT current immigrants. Francis, too, has criticized a Marian piety that expects her to be a ‘postmistress’ that daily delivers a message interpreting what is going on and what we should do about it. There, of course is a lot of good Marian piety among current immigrants.
Jack, thanks for this comment - every paragraph is invaluable. I didn't know that about the Aparecida document.
DeleteI also have noticed that the streak of piety among Catholics is stronger and more authentic in some way among immigrants than it is in natives like us who may be working too hard to sustain something whose time has passed. My own piety, such as it is, runs more along the lines of working with homeless and hungry people - a rather different stream of spirituality than what I experienced at the shrine yesterday.
Re: Francis and popular piety: I have read or heard somewhere that he is more "pro-Medjugorje" than the official church has previously been. Does anyone know details about that?
A.Mazing. I lived in Milwaukee from 1952-57; 1959-61 and 1970-74, and I never heard of Our Lady of Good Help. In 1956, Charles House of the Milwaukee Sentinel did a "walk into autumn" for two or three weeks in September in which he walked north, talking to people along the way, from somewhere south of Green Bay to the tip of Door County. I always wanted to replicate that walk, but when one has four (at the time) small kids, one doesn't.
ReplyDeleteI knew about the combative lady at Necedah, WI, where the combative lady claimed to see the Blessed Mother regularly, although no one else, especially the bishop, ever did. Mary's message had something to do, inter alia, with communism, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Needless to say, Holy Mother took a dim view, which only made the apparitionist more combative. But I didn't know there was an approved site in Door County.
I'm not big on such things anyway, but they don't irritate me, and I'd never say there are not more things in this world than are dreamed of in Scholastic theology. I went to Guadalupe as a pilgrim. But that's my exception, and I'd do it again.
Tom, I am more or less with you, both in not being particularly big on such things, and in tolerating it in others.
DeleteI'm also coming around, more and more, to the notion that these subjective and personal religious experiences, which are not as dramatic for most of us as they were for Adele, are critical to forming and sustaining our spirituality. A faith based only on Scholastic theology would, for most of us, be both arid and at least partially incomprehensible.
Jim, what kind of non-Adele type religious experiences have formed and sustain your spirituality?
Delete"Jim, what kind of non-Adele type religious experiences have formed and sustain your spirituality?"
DeleteI have had some religious experiences in which I strongly felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was an intensely joyful and exhilarating feeling. I guess I still have them, although not as intensely: there are a lot of times when I am praying that I can sense God's presence. These days it happens more frequently but doesn't feel as "different". Maybe I really am getting a bit more spiritual as time goes on and am becoming more comfortable living in a spiritual reality, if that makes sense.
I've never had a vision like Adele.
"A.Mazing. I lived in Milwaukee from 1952-57; 1959-61 and 1970-74, and I never heard of Our Lady of Good Help."
DeleteRight - apparently the bishop of Green Bay didn't do anything to officially recognize it until 2010, and it wasn't until 2016 that the US bishops declared it a National Shrine. So it's not a surprise that you hadn't heard of it when you were in Milwaukee during the years you mention. Virtually nobody around here had heard of it, either, but when I mention it, everyone is interested.
It seems, though, that the locals in the Green Bay Diocese have been congregating there on Marian feast days for many years prior to that, and people seeking the Blessed Mother's intercession also have been coming there for decades.
Jim, that's nice that you and Therese were able to get away for a mini-vacation. And I had not heard of Our Lady of Good Help.
ReplyDeleteI have my own personal theory about visions. I don't doubt that God can and has spoken to people in dreams and visions, and that Mary and the saints and angels also have done so. I think visions must come through the same part of the brain that dreams do, though I have no idea what a neurologist would say about that. Dreams are uncanny things, mostly being random stuff filtered through the weeds of our experiences and understanding, but occasionally meaning...*something*. They are more in feelings and impressions than words. I think that visions must be like a waking dream, and would have to come through the same personal filters. Maybe that's why Mary seems to come across in the visionaries' accounts like the nun that was our grade school principal. Caring but no nonsense. "Cupcake, listen up, because this is all the warning you're going to get." Yes, Sister. Which doesn't mean that the message didn't come from Mary, just that there is some personal filters that it had to come through.
I have to think that the message given to Adele about the need for catechesis was authentic. Also that she didn't didn't need a doctorate in theology to teach children what they need to know about their faith.
Anyway, that's my (likely worthless) two bits worth.
Katherine, thanks, I don't think that's worthless at all - in fact I think there is a lot of wisdom in the idea that Mary's appearances are filtered by us. I had never made the connection with dreams before, though. What an intriguing thought.
DeleteThere are times during the work day (which often is stressful for me) when I become very sleepy and even nod off in my chair. On those occasions, I find that I'm plunged immediately into intensive dreaming - I've passed right into whatever stage of sleep enables dreaming. I am sure I am as sleep-deprived as the next suburban worker-bee, but I also wonder sometimes if my getting pulled into insta-slumber isn't a part of my brain trying to maneuver me into a place where the dreams can be expressed - in other words, it's not the sleep, but rather the dreams, which are driving it. Maybe this is all too Freudian - I think he is widely discredited these days.
I don't put a great deal of stock in dreams, but there have been times when they told me where a lost object was, or helped me solve a problem. Sometimes there is a bit of humor in a dream. After retirement I rejoined the art club which I had been in a number of years ago. We were to be getting ready for a spring show. In my dream I searched high and low, unsuccessfully,for the picture I had intended to enter. When I woke up I thought, no wonder I couldn't find the picture, because I haven't done one yet. Sort of a needed kick in the pants to get busy and actually paint one. Which I did, but the show was cancelled because of Covid. But it got me started painting again.
DeleteWho knows, maybe your dreams are an idea trying to express itself,
St. Julian of Norwich is my go-to person on visions. She carefully delineated visions that were fully tactile, aural only, or inspirational. Then she spent the rest of her time trying to understand what they meant. Many Jungians find her interesting and inspiring.
DeleteI don't put much stock in dreams per se, but I think, as Katherine seems to imply, that we often give ourselves good advice in them. Happy painting!
The chemo drives my dreams now, and they are mostly quite unpleasant. But even these sometimes give me hints about the roots of my own anxieties and soul-trouble, and I suppose we can be nudged by bad dreams as much as good ones.
Re: getting nudged by bad dreams: I am an ex-smoker. Even though it has been decades since I smoked a cigarette, on occasion I dream that I have taken up smoking again. I wake up feeling terrible about myself, until I realize it was a dream. It does sort of strengthen my resolve to stay an ex-smoker.
DeleteJim, my husband is also an ex smoker. It took him about 30 years after quitting not to have the urge to light up when he saw someone else doing so. I always tried to give him positive reinforcement, that I appreciated that he was taking care of his own health and that of the family. Not to mention financial health, when one considers how much money is going up in smoke with a nicotine habit.
DeleteI haven't smoked or had a drink for 35 years. Still have the urges. I suppose we all love our sins.
DeleteIsn't it interesting that these apparitions and visions only happen to Catholics? Predisposition? Gullibility?
ReplyDeleteProtestants have near death experience accounts, in which they tell of talking with Jesus, and seeing those who have died previously. And some have recounted meeting an angel. I suppose if they saw Mary they wouldn't believe it anyway.
DeleteAnd of course there's always the Mormons, who have had dome visionary accounts.
"dome" should be "some"
DeleteAlan Hunt said his wife had them regularly as a Methodist.
DeleteThere definitely are Lutherans who put stock in Marian apparitions.
DeleteThe evidence is that Catholic and other Christians are more predisposed to experience abnormal spiritual events that are common to their denomination (e.g. Marian visions, speaking in tongues, being slain by the spirit, being spiritually reborn). But researchers do find some evidence for these experiences beyond denominations.
DeleteThe evidence is also that in general believing Christian are less credulous about paranormal events such as UFOs, ghosts, dreams telling the future, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. However there is variation among denominations 31% of liberal denominations are credulous, including 48% of Unitarians, 41 of Episcopalians, 36% of United Church of Christ. Thirty-two percent of Catholics are credulous. However only 18% of Conservative Protestants were credulous and only 15% of Mormons.
Education has only a very slight negative relationship to credulity.
Likely exposure to religious indoctrination, e.g. bible school, catechism reduces belief in paranormal phenomenon in contrast with secular education doing very little.
Interesting statistics about credulity.
DeleteReligious faith may make one more open to accepting the unexplainable. Whether that is credulity or open mindedness would be in the epistemology of the beholder. If one accepts the possibility of miracles, one will see and register them in everyday life where others may see only coincidences. A friend of mine has a stack of miracle/coincidence that he labels Godincidences. If they are random coincidence, well, they were spooky coincidences.
Delete"Interesting statistics about credulity."
DeleteActually they are part of a consistent pattern. The most likely people to experience some sort of "religious" conversion are those with little or no religion. Nature seems to abhor a belief vacuum. Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton were both raised in households with little of no belief, and spent a lot of time as young people with similar people. Yet they became powerful beacons of religious experience, whole maintaining skepticism of some cultural aspects of religion. Day's famous remark that the "Church is a whore but she is our mother."
A German sociologist once said that while he and his Russian colleague were both atheists, he was a Lutheran atheist and his colleague was an Orthodox atheist -meaning that their belief systems were formed by their cultures and did not exist as some abstract "scientific" belief system independent of culture.
Miracle stories are part of every religious tradition. Christians don’t own the patent.
Deletehttps://www.patheos.com/blogs/seekingshanti/2016/05/miracles_buddhist_daoist_hindu_tsog/
Similarly, near death accounts are also found all over the world. I have read several studies on them. The encounters of those narratives reflect the cultural and religious backgrounds of those who experience them. Christians might say they met Jesus. Catholics might meet Mary. Buddists might convers with the Buddha. Etc.
Scientists have suggested that the brain releases a shower of feel good chemicals when near death. But some don’t die, and can recall the images - probably a specific type of dream .
Grew up with Unitarians. The ones who were not outright atheists were pretty high on the woo-woo meter. There were a lot of idiosyncratic hybrid systems that resulted from desultory spiritual and occult readings.
DeleteSadly, Unitarians don't read enough about Unitarianism. My dad seemed to have caught the Unitarian spirit better than most. He believed that the "best" religion was the one that expected you to swallow the least dogma. His idea was that if you could follow the Golden Rule, God (if there was a God) would forgive pretty much anything else.
Before he died, he reiterated this and said that the only reason I was a Catholic was because I thought the trappings were "pretty." Certainly I ponder this a lot.
Nobody will be surprised when I say that I’m not a believer in the gazillion Marian apparitions. We live an hour or so away from a former pilgrimage site in Emmitsburg, Md., the home of Elizabeth Seton. The woman who claims to see Mary every week started her career as a visionary after a trip to Medjugorje. (What a huge cash cow that has been for all the main actors!). But the archdiocese of Baltimore shut her Thursday night gatherings down 20 years ago. I was surprised at the time, but I guess they didn’t want to be seen as supporting this highly questionable enterprise. She’s still out there, probably raking it in from all her fans.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.emmitsburg.net/cult_watch/news_reports/dispatch_article.htm
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2000-09-14-0009140032-story.html