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'Go away' painted on monastery's statues
[Source: Chicago Sun-Times, January 3, 2006]

A religious order's plans to build a community in rural McHenry County were greeted with heated opposition from neighbors before approval was granted last summer.

But even they were shocked by what vandals did to statues of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary at the Fraternite Notre Dame monastery on New Year's Eve.

Someone spray-painted "Killer," "KKK," "666," "Go away" and "Leave" on the figures. They wrote an obscene message in snow at the base of one statue and stole an American flag.

"It breaks our heart," Sister Mary Valerie said Monday. She is one of a half-dozen priests and nuns who moved into the monastery on the 65-acre site near Marengo last August.

They discovered the damage after returning early Sunday from an all-night prayer vigil at the order's mother house, at 502 N. Central in Chicago. Although that is in a "very bad" part of the Austin neighborhood, in five years nobody has touched the statue out front, Valerie said. "They don't treat us the way they do out in the country," she said.

On Dec. 2, the Marengo monastery's mailbox was uprooted and replaced with a stop sign. The order said nothing to authorities. But officials reported the latest incident, and McHenry County sheriff's police are investigating.

Last March the order sought the county's permission to build a monastery, convent, cemetery, print shop and bakery on the property. Neighbors objected at public hearings, but the McHenry County Board approved the plan.

NEIGHBORS APPALLED

"I was one of the more vocal opponents," said longtime resident Robert Cisneros. He cited fears that the community's commercial ventures will lower property values and change the character of the area, consisting mostly of farms and estate homes. "It will stand out like a sore thumb," he said.

But when he heard about the desecration, Cisneros and his wife visited the monastery Sunday "to lend a little support and tell them this was certainly not the mind-set of the neighborhood," he said. "Everyone I spoke to was just appalled by what happened."

County Board member Tina Hill of Woodstock said she hoped the culprits were "kids," not adults offended by the order's presence. "This is not the way we want our county to be known," she said.

The Virgin Mary First Won Hearts
[Source: Newsquest Media, December 24, 2005]

There's something about Mary. And Jodie McKenna, pictured, knows what that something is. "She was Jesus' mother, " the 11-year-old from St Gregory's Primary in Glasgow explains as she prepares to play the aforementioned mum in her school's nativity play. You can't ask for a more succinct explanation than that.

To all Christians around the world preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ tomorrow, that is indeed what she was. What she is, though - or at what she represents - may be a little more. In some ways the history of theological thought about Mary is the history of Christian culture.

"The evidence suggests that devotion to Mary was more developed in the Eastern church than the Western church to begin with, " says Dr Sarah Boss, a Catholic theologian and director of the Centre for Marian Studies at the University of Wales, Lampeter. "The earliest prayer to Mary that survives in writing is from Egypt and is probably from the fourth century. The Western church caught up rather later. But by the time you get into the later Middle Ages the whole of Europe was completely besotted with Mary. You find that the way Mary is thought of often reflects the state of the church: Luther and Calvin, for instance, held her in great reverence."

Because Mary was the prime mediation figure between humanity and God in the Catholic Church, she increasingly became a symbol of difference between the Catholic and Protestant faiths. But Boss believes theological thinking is now moving beyond that opposition. "Since the Second Vatican Council, that clearly has started to change.

Catholics have been much more willing to be open in general to dialogue with Protestants, and Protestants are increasingly saying, 'Haven't we neglected Mary wrongly? She's in the scriptures and she is a very significant figure.'

Books are now being published by evangelicals who previously never wrote about Mary at all."

Mary remains an important figure in Christian thinking--and, given the number of appearances she makes around the world--to ordinary Christians too. But even the ubiquity of Marian appearances tells us something of the world we live in, says Boss. "One thing I've noticed that makes me slightly uneasy is that there have been several 20th-century appearances in which she's kind of warning of the end-times, which obviously speaks of the times we live in. In medieval apparitions there's something more upbeat and hopeful: she was the one who reassured you that somehow it would be all right."

There's something about Mary. There always has been.

Clearwater Image Still Popular on its 10th Yuletide
[Source: The Tampa Tribune (Florida), December 24, 2005]

It's not like it was before, but a steady stream of the faithful still visit what many believe to be a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary gracing the side of a former bank building on U.S. 19.

"I try to be here at least once a week," said Bert Morin, who each winter migrates south from Canada. "I was here when it happened about 10 years ago."

Morin's memory is about right. The image was discovered Dec. 17, 1996, and the people who preserve it, Shepherds of Christ Ministries, celebrated the ninth anniversary two weeks ago by dedicating a stone grotto nearby that features a statue of Mary standing over a well they say produces special water.

This will be the 10th Christmas for the image, or what remains of it.

A teen with a slingshot destroyed the top half of the image in early 2004, shattering three large panes of golden reflective glass that bore what many believe was the image of Mary's hooded head and shoulders.

When the image was discovered, thousands of people flocked to the site daily.

A temporary stoplight was put up on nearby Drew Street, and Clearwater police formed what they called the Miracle Management Task Force to handle crowds. Spokesman Wayne Shelor estimated that more than 500,000 people visited during the first three months.

Attendance - and the donations needed to preserve the site - dropped off sharply after last year's vandalism, Shepherds of Christ President John Weickert said.

It was not the first time a vandal struck, and many hope the missing portion of the image will reappear.

In 1997, someone sprayed the image with an acidic liquid, obscuring a large portion of the face and shoulder. A downpour a month later washed away the stain and the image re-emerged.

The Ohio-based ministry, which prays for the spiritual well-being of priests, purchased the building in 2000 after renting it for several years. After last year's destruction, Shepherds of Christ spent $90,000 to cover the remaining image with protective glass.

The glass also covers a smaller image that some believe is of Jesus hidden in the folds of Mary's gown.

Shepherds of Christ has made many other improvements.

The chain link fence that used to ring a parking lot that now serves as a sort of open-air sanctuary has been replaced with an attractive brick wall. Along the top of the wall runs a channel through which flows what ministry workers call "Jesus water" from the "Jesus well," which is near the Jesus image.

Along with a huge variety of religious material for sale at the Shepherds of Christ gift shop inside the former bank building, the ministry gives away small bottles of "Jesus water" and "Mary water," the latter from a well at the new grotto.

Weickert said the water recently surprised ministry workers with its healing qualities.

"The Jesus and Mary wells are the biggest gift we got from God to make up for" the damaged image, he said.

Palm Harbor resident Jackie Fayer stopped by last week to pray for a few minutes before stocking up on the water, which she said she planned to give as Christmas presents to a few choice friends.

Seven years ago, Fayer said, she was suffering from a chronic illness that went away after praying at the site.

"This is a very holy place, and I believe in its power," Fayer said. "I had a miraculous healing. Oh yes, it's a special place for me."

Word of the Virgin Mary image has spread all over the world, and foreign tourists show up all the time, said Kathleen Wren, the Shepherds of Christ site manager.

Sure enough, a family from England--with a sister visiting from Africa--was stocking up on religious items at the gift shop last week.

"It's an important part of our trip," said Juliet Ndibazza, who traveled from Uganda for her second visit in three years.

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