I think the way that some people behaved at Knock was completely senseless. I felt like I was in a mad house, and that reality and normal behaviour were temporarily suspended.
What happened there as far as I could see was:
1/. At 3pm everyone was looking at the statues behind the old church in Knock to see would Our Lady appear. The visionary who has predicted she would come had said she would.
2/. She did not appear. No one saw her there.
3/. The visionary then said Our Lady told him to tell everyone to look at the sky and Our Lady would send them a sign.
4/. Most people, at the invitation of the priest over the loudspeaker went into the Basilica for mass and had no interest in looking at the sky. Many people stared at the sky.
5/. The vast majority of people who stared at the sky saw nothing unusual.
6/. A small minority of people claimed they saw ‘the sun dancing’ and one woman is reported in the local newspaper to having said ‘I spoke to the Blessed Virgin. She was fading in and out of the clouds. She didn’t appear in full form this time. But she did say she would be back’.
7/. Not one priest said he saw anything unusual.
8/. Not one photograph has appeared of anything unusual, and there were at least two professional photographers present, along with many people having their own camera.
Being there made me realise how wildly conflicting reports about the same incident can be given from people. Hundreds of people were there. One group claims they saw nothing. One group claims they saw the unusual colours and movements of the sun in the sky. Others claim that Our Lady spoke to them. It illustrates how easily it could have been for those people in Knock who claim they saw the original apparition to have been completely mistaken, and how easily they could have made people believe they saw something at the time.
To exclude religion from this for a moment, it is funny to be part of a society where people simply can’t look up at the sky and accurately bear witness to what there was to see.………a bright sun, a few clouds and a blue sky……and nothing more!
There is no escaping craziness of it all - some people in Knock on Sunday claimed that Our Lady, Mary, Mother of God appeared in the sky and spoke to them, whereas the reality was it was a nice bright day with a few clouds in the sky! And that is not an embarrassment? Yes it is. As Fr. Dougal would say “That’s mad Ted!”
Have they a right to believe what they want? Yes. Are people entitled to believe in God? Of course. But the people in Knock last Sunday are wrong to say things happened when the reality is they didn’t happen. The only explanation is that they saw what they wanted to see and interpreted things, as they wanted to interpret them.