3/31/2011

*Mary ¢â‚¬â„¢s Late Arrival to the United States*

— Joseph Laycock

On December 8, 2010, Our Lady of Good Help, a tiny shrine in Champion,
Wisconsin, became the first Marian apparition site in the United States to
receive official church approval. David L. Ricken, bishop of Green Bay,
concluded a two-year investigation and determined that the story of how the
Virgin Mary appeared to a Belgian nun in 1859 and the alleged supernatural
phenomena associated with the shrine are  ¢â‚¬Å“worthy of belief. ¢â‚¬  Catholics have
been in the United States since Charles Carroll of Maryland was a signer of
the Declaration of Independence. Why has it taken two centuries for American
Catholics to receive an official shrine of their own?

Since at least the third century, there have been thousands of apparitions
of the Virgin Mary reported across all continents. But while Mary ¢â‚¬â„¢s
supernatural intervention is a cherished part of Catholic tradition,
apparitions have always existed in tension with the Holy See. Mary ¢â‚¬â„¢s
frequent appearances to uneducated peasant girls, often accompanied by
apocalyptic prophecies, have given fodder to the Church ¢â‚¬â„¢s Protestant and
rationalist critics. For this reason, Church authorities have approved only
a handful of apparitions such as those at Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima.
Furthermore, this approval is only conditional. Pope Benedict XIV
(1740-1758) introduced the distinction between private revelation (*fides
humana*) and doctrine (*fides catholica*). In essence, the Church is only
expressing tolerance for Catholics who choose to believe in these
revelations.

But this suspicion of Marian piety also made Mary an appealing weapon
against rationalism. The modern era of Marian apparitions began in France
during the mid-nineteenth century. In the first years of the Second
Republic, Mary began appearing all over France from Paris, to the village of
La Salette, to a grotto at Lourdes. Conservative Catholics embraced Mary as
the vanquisher of  ¢â‚¬Å“Marianne, ¢â‚¬  an emblem representing the Enlightenment and
the triumph of the Republic. This popular devotion was reinforced by Pope
Pius IX, considered to be  ¢â‚¬Å“a Marian Pope. ¢â‚¬  In 1854, he declared the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception, that Mary had been born without original sin.
This was done without the full sanction of the Church council and is
regarded as a rare use of Papal infallibility. Pius IX had been forced to
flee Rome by Italian nationalists and he too saw Mary as a shield against
revolution and change, declaring,  ¢â‚¬Å“May the Blessed Virgin, who conquered and
destroyed all heresies, uproot and destroy this dangerous error of
Rationalism. ¢â‚¬ 

While all this was underway, a wave of Belgium immigrants was settling in
Wisconsin ¢â‚¬â„¢s Green Bay peninsula. Adele Brise came to the area with her
parents as a young girl. One year after the famous sighting in Lourdes,
Brise too beheld a vision of a lady in dazzling white. The apparition
ordered Brise to pray for the conversion of sinners and to spread the
Catholic catechism to the frontier. A shrine erected near the site of the
apparition is said to have healing powers and was adorned with crutches
supposedly left behind by pilgrims who had once been disabled. During the
great Peshtigo fire of 1871 in which 1.2 million acres burned and over 1,200
people died, the shrine remained unscathed, sheltering the pilgrims within.

The experience of American Catholics has been different from those in
Mexico, Portugal, and France where Marian apparitions have received
approval. As a religious minority, American Catholics have always struggled
to prove that they can be both Catholic and American. While Adele Brise was
building her convent, Catholic intellectuals like Isaac Hecker and Orestes
Brownson were seeking to reconcile Catholicism with American culture. Marian
devotionalism seemed to be a vestige of the Old World, confirming that
Catholics were antagonistic to progress and democracy, not to mention being
superstitious and alien.

The tension surrounding Mary in America climaxed after the reforms of
Vatican II. Many conservative Catholics, feeling betrayed by their Church,
turned to a strange mix of Cold War paranoia and Marian supernaturalism.
There was a resurgence of Marian seers in places like Necedah, Wisconsin,
Bayside, New York, and Conyers, Georgia. In each case, church officials
strongly condemned these apparitions. They were called an embarrassment to
the church even as pilgrims arrived in droves. In 1975, Mary Ann Van Hoof, a
particularly defiant seer, was placed under an interdict ¢â‚¬“ ¢â‚¬“a lesser form of
excommunication.

The Church ¢â‚¬â„¢s endorsement of Our Lady of Good Help marks an important
milestone in American Catholicism and reveals how the Church ¢â‚¬â„¢s priorities
have shifted. It appears that supernaturalism is no longer a liability but
an asset, part of the Catholic mystique.

*References*

The official website of the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help can be seen
here: http://www.shrineofourladyofgoodhelp.com/

Erik Eckholm,  ¢â‚¬Å“Wisconsin on the Map to Pray with
Mary<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/us/24mary.html>, ¢â‚¬ 
*New York Times*, 23 December, 2010.

*Joseph Laycock* is a PhD student in religion and society at Boston
University, and the author of *Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern
Vampirism* (Praeger Publishers, 2009).

———-

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago
Divinity School.

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