The tree stump ''apparition'' in Co Limerick has been dismissed as ''silly season stuff'' by leading Church philosopher, Fr Brendan Purcell. The retired Professor of Philosophy is the latest clergyman to publicly dismiss the stump in Rathkeale that apparently projects the image of the Blessed Virgin attracting thousands of devotees in the last week.
Fr Purcell said the stump which ''is not even apparently inspiring'' was filling a vacuum in newsrooms. ''If this had happened in December we wouldn't even have heard about it.''
The parish priest of Rathkeale, Canon Joseph Dempsey has described it as ''only a bit of a tree'' but the Rathkeale Community Council want the stump, which is on church grounds, protected with a glass case.
Severe line
According to Fr Purcell, it is the Church's role to take a severe line on apparitions. ''It is part of the test of [the apparition's] authenticity that the Church is sceptical: if it is real then the people will overcome that resistance, like the children in Fatima did.''
Media reports have drawn the parallel between the stump apparition and the moving Marian statues in the summer of 1985, when Ireland was previously in recession.
But Fr Purcell said the phenomenon was more of an indication of people's need for a ''concrete connection with God''.
Accessible
''After Vatican II a lot of older devotions disappeared, like praying for the Holy Souls in November - and nothing was put in their place. People need to feel God is accessible and as priests we need to make sure God is accessible through imaginative liturgy.'''
Fr Purcell also warned of the danger taking the focus away from places where God is definitely present and referred a story about the English Saint Boniface, who cut down a tree in Germany, the locals had been worshipping.
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