Cheater's Grotty

The village of Cleator in Cumberland boasts a large Catholic church with an even larger expanse of land to its rear. As well as having hundreds of graves, it plays host to a grotto of Mary as well as other statues of Roman saints standing astride the parkland. In the grotto, by the rock on which Mary's statue stands and before which Bernadette prays, is an actual stone from the spot in Lourdes, France, at which Mary is said to have appeared in 1858.

It is, of course, nonsense. That something appeared to Bernadette may well be true, that it was Mary the mother of Jesus it certainly was not. Claiming to be ‘the Immaculate Conception’, that Mary was a being in addition to Jesus Christ to be born sinless, is a lie. If Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light, how much more the old Mother-Goddess demon from the ancient world who lost the limelight with the decline of paganism, but reclaimed it by pretending to be the Handmaiden of the Lord? The Mary of the Bible described God as her Saviour; the ‘Mary’ of Rome needs no salvation, for she dispenses it herself.

A rather pompous sign in the grounds proclaims the grounds’ consecration and therefore visitors’ need to be silent. Yet this is something against whichwe  should be speaking; this is not Christianity, this is not the faith of the Bible, this is not the gospel, but a rude counterfeit, a blending of Christianity with paganism, a poisoned well, a compromised medicine.