Tuesday 1 March 2016

KNOCK SHRINE - MULTI MILLION POUND REVAMP


THE IRISH CATHOLIC CHURCH IS SPENDING MILLIONS OF POUNDS ON REFURBISHING ITS MARIAN SHRINE AND KNOCK IN MAYO.

The latest installation at Known was unveiled last Sunday - a mosaic measuring 14 metres by 14 metres at a rumoured cost of £ 1 million.

Since the renovations began the parish priest of Knock - Father Richard Gibbons (45)  - has refused to say how much the renovations are costing and when asked about the costs he is avoiding answering.


Richard Gibbons
He did say recently that the new million pounds mosaic was paid for by "an anonymous donor" who did not want to be named.

THERE ARE MORAL QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED ABOUT THIS MULTI MILLION POUND RENOVATION.

The main moral question to be asked is this:

Would Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, approve of the Catholic Church spending millions on a luxury basilica when:

1. Half the world is starving?




2. Half the world has no clean water.




3. Millions of people are dying of preventable illnesses the world over.

4. Hundreds of families are becoming homeless in Ireland each week as a result of bank repossessions.

5. 1500 homeless people are sleeping on the streets of Ireland's cities and towns.




6. There is a severe lack of social housing in Ireland.

When people asked Jesus what they needed to do to follow him he replied: "GO, SELL EVERYTHING YOU OWN, GIVE IT TO THE POOR AND COME FOLLOW ME".

Bishops and priests are constantly preaching that THE PEOPLE are the real wealth of the Church.

Should they not put their money where their mouths are and instead of building multi million pound basilicas to Mary they should instead:

1. Use Church money to build houses for the poor and needy?

2. Open homeless centres for the homeless and the hungry?

3. Open FOOD BANKS in every parish for those who cannot eat properly?

4. Spend their millions on the world's hungry, thirsty, sick and disadvantaged?

The Catholic Church worldwide and in The Vatican has enough money to solve, at least for a while, many of the world's problems.

But instead they prefer to build big basilicas to a woman called Mary who lived a simple and relatively poor life in the ancient village of Nazareth.

The Catholic Church preaches charity but it keeps its vast fortunes to itself to build big churches and plush palaces and houses for its bishops and priests. 

Its always been the same. When THE GREAT FAMINE struck Ireland the Catholic Church went on building churches instead of feeding the poor.

As someone once said to me: "During the Great Famine in Ireland no priest died"! 

Fat priest v Skinny Jesus


The REAL JESUS is both deeply offended and deeply horrified by their staggering hypocrisy.

"Once upon a time in Ireland,
We had wooden chalices and golden priests.
Now we have golden chalices 
And wooden priests".

Why do not more people see through their utter hypocrisy and lack of true Christianity?







17 comments:

  1. MourneManMichael1 March 2016 at 18:00

    Must agree with your comment Pat about the hypocrisy.
    And to repeat the gist of my comment of 18th Feb: ......nothing will change until each and every RC parishoner ceases all and every financial contribution to their church.
    MMM

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  2. More evidence,as if any is needed,to highlight the stinking and sickening hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. The photo contrasting the old Nazi and the starving child says it all!

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  3. I wonder did our Bishop pay for it from the spare change left over from Lisbreen.

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  4. The British finance minister is sometimes known, for his efforts to provide homes for those without them, as 'builder George'. Why can we not have a 'builder bishop'? Could we not sell all the parochial houses and bishops' residences and use the proceeds to build homes for the homeless? In place of permanent housing priests and bishops would be billeted on a parishioner "for only a week". 52 volunteers from each parish could put the priest up for only a week at a time. They would be required to offer services such as laundry and meals. The volunteers, likely to be from the most faithful members of the parish, would be delighted at having the priest among them for a week. If a volunteer's home was too mean, the food poor or the circumstances otherwise not to the priest's liking, he would be comforted that he had to endure it for only a week. If the volunteer's home was richly appointed, the food good, with wine on the table, the priest would not allow himself to get too attached to those comforts as they would last for only a week. Moving from home to home for only a week at time, the priest would see how members of his flock lived; he would experience their lives, share in their hopes, taste the bitterness of their disappointments. Living among the faithful, being part of their daily existence, he would truly have the smell of the sheep about him. Drawing a leaf from the text-books of capitalism, there is no reason why we could not take a further step and sell the parish churches on a lease-back arrangement: a capital sum would be raised from the sale of the church, to be applied for good works, while the church would be 'leased back' to the diocese: effectively a rent would be paid for its use with the rental amount being paid out of the monthly stipend contributed by parishioners. Do you think, by renouncing ownership of its property, the Church might be freer in spirit to carry out its mission of salvation?

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    1. This would have an interesting effect on the priests' behaviour by obliging them to show the public face all the time, since it is much more difficult to hide the evidence of alcoholism, drug addiction, strange sexual predilections, and even just plain bad temper, when living in somebody else's house.

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    2. I agree very much with the spirit of what you are saying -- that there is a lack of simplicity (and perhaps of humility)and that resources are squandered on unnecessary splendour etc. I have no wish at all to do Devil's Advocate but interesting to remember what Christ had to say about the above idea! See Luke's Gospel, Chapter 10. He had his reasons ---

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  5. I served in Knock as a Deacon. No Mosaic is worth 1 m. I once drank from the holy water tap and ended up with an infection. Thought it was drinking water at the time...

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  6. Well to be honest I'd rather cut my throat than ask the church for help .I'm from coleraine and when anyone knocks the priests door for help they get told to ring the local s.v.p and beg off them . They in turn tell the country your business . If I had to I'd rather beg on the street than go cap in hand to the church or s.v.p

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  7. if the numbers attending the revamped shrine don't come up to scratch or if the mindless morons don't put enough dosh in the baskets then the church will employ plan B. An apparition !!
    Dalriada Dick

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    1. MourneManMichael2 March 2016 at 14:11

      Nah Dick, they'll just start charging admission fees!
      I was in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter yesterday, and went in to St Annes. Well it had started to rain!
      Nevertheless on entering that cavernous space, it seemed empty, .......until from behind pillars swooped two purple robed 'chuggers' telling me that if I went any further there was a £6 admission fee!
      When asked they said it had been introduced to defray maintenance costs, but that I was welcome to go into the little side chapel set aside for prayer.
      I told them I had no wish to contribute to any church, and as I was an atheist I had no need for prayer, and that I'd prefer to see the whole place knocked down and housing built in its place. (politely of course)
      MMM

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    2. Quite a lot of cathedrals have an admission charge these days like you I wouldn't give them a penny . I paid once to get into Westminster abbey £15 I think . I don't do it now I go in side entrance and say I'm in for a prayer then sneak in and if I'm stopped I say no English wife tickets and it works a treat

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    3. Another apparition... So much of star trek science fiction has become fact....Beam me down Scotty

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  8. The Church never sells anything unless it is forced to. ie To raise funds to pay for clerical child abuse claims.
    Property is equated with power, hence the huge parochial houses built in the 19th & 20th century.
    The 'Chateau de Noel' (Lisbreen) project last year in Belfast showed us all what the real priorities are.
    I don't expect change in this regard anytime soon.

    LUX.

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  9. You are quite right lux. Nothing will change anytime soon. It won't change until all those brainwashed,silly people have their eyes opened to the fact that the RC church is taking the poor suckers for one big ride! MMM is perfectly correct. I remember my dad saying that the the location of biggest gathering of the disappointed in Northern Iireland is Miltown Cemetery.

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  10. “Is this a time for you to be living in your panelled houses, while my house lies in ruin”? (Hag 1:4) We are living in an age where those in the church are acting and behaving no different to the world. The church is no longer light to the world nor salt of the earth and that’s why many are leaving. Everywhere Abraham went he ‘pitched his tent’ and built an altar. Today we have too many building their tents and pitching their altars. Too many ‘shepherds’ feeding themselves and neglecting their sheep. I can’t understand the need to build shrines or expensive church buildings when he Lord ‘no longer lives in temples built by human hands (Acts 17:24). From Matt 13 to Matt 18 Jesus taught the principles of the Kingdom of God and everybody got healed and nobody was in want of anything. The Apostles for 3½years were taught the principles of the Kingdom of God under the ministry of Jesus. In Acts the people we are told came under Apostolic teaching and they carried on everything that Jesus did.(Heb 1:1) and the Lord wants to establish his character and his nature within us, it’s no longer what I do, it’s who I am. You cannot establish character by works. How did unlearned, uneducated men turn the world upside down? Apart from Paul not one of them had any theological qualifications. The church of today couldn’t turn a pancake and filling people into large dead buildings or shrines doesn’t constitute a resurrection

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