Documents / Document

The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock; also, the Official Depositions of the Eye-witnesses

M.H. Gill & Son (1880), via Internet Archive · 1880 · 90 pages · text from the file's own layer

This book was prepared and edited by John MacPhilpin of Tuam and published in Dublin by M. H. Gill & Son in 1880. It reprints Tuam News reports on the apparition of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, which about twenty people saw on the south gable of Knock chapel, County Mayo, on 21 August 1879. It also gives the witnesses' official depositions, which a commission of priests appointed by the Archbishop of Tuam judged trustworthy. It lists cures recorded in Archdeacon Cavanagh's diary.

27
from it is seen. Now, according to the testimony of the
witnesses, it was, during the whole period, pouring torrents
of rain on the gable end of the church, so much so, that all
of them say what they wondered at most, like Moses look
ing at the bush burning and yet not consumed, was, that the
"bodies" before them were deluged with rain, and all the
while they were not wet, nor the silvery glow that surrounded
them in any way lessened. The glowing light of phosphor
is yellowish ; this seen on the night of the apparition was
white.
The objection that the appearances have been produced
by electric lights is too fanciful. Electric lights do not
be made manifest in one part of the earth, without being
seen or made manifest under the same circumstances in
other parts. If electric lights arise and are diffused around
one gable of a church at a certain time and in certain cir
cumstances, what prevents the electric lights from being seen
under similar and the like circumstances in other places ?
Hence it is in itself a kind of miracle to make the electric
current, everywhere existing in the earth, tell without special
cause in one place and not in another, in like situation.
Lastly, about the stratifications under the earth. That is
merely fanciful or hypothetic. But suppose there are bitu
minous substances lying under the church, fifty or sixty feet
down under the surface, why do exhalations arise at the gable
rather than in any other part ? Why do the lights, seen
almost each night, increase in bulk as they ascend around the
gable and the wall each side ? How, too, could well-defined
figures be fashioned from any such exhalations ?—why does
not curling smoke make images continuously for hours ?
All that has been said or written has no positive sanction
from the Church or from the Church rulers and ecclesiastical
guides ; that which has been just stated has only the same

About this file

Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 90 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.