Signs and Lying Wonders!!!
Eye Witness to Miraculous events that Haunt Justice Scalia - “Repair the Injustice”
I saw nearly two dozen statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary weep in my home, at the rectory, in church, and elsewhere in 1992. The bishop and chancellor of the diocese of Arlington, John Keating and William Reinecke, saw their own statues tear before their eyes at the Chancery. The Blessed Mother wept on television. The Washington Post called the occurrences “unexplainable.” Everybody close to the miraculous events of 1992 knows the truth. Yet for nearly twenty years the diocese of Arlington has stonewalled all inquiries into the matter.
And now we know that the Chancellor of the diocese of Arlington, William Reinecke, who was undoubtedly instrumental in formulating the diocese‘s policy of silence toward the miraculous events—a position effectively ending the Catholic Church’s interest in them— was sadly a man with multiple accusations of pedophilia.
Pope Benedict calls on bishops and cardinals to repair the injustice
Pope Benedict XVI last week told Vatican officials that they must reflect on the
church's culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal. From the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI, in his annual Christmas speech to Bishops and Cardinals, said "We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred." In his traditional, end-of-the-year speech Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" that required the church to accept the "humiliation" as a call for renewal. "We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen," the Pope said.
As a former member of the diocese of Arlington, I echo the Pope’s call to “ask ourselves what we can do to repair the injustice.”
For nearly twenty years witnesses to the incredible display of the supernatural—witnesses to Our Lady’s tears ―have been denied a fair account of the events by the Catholic Church.
The Bishop of Arlington Ignores God’s call
First, let’s look at the bishop of the Arlington diocese, John R. Keating’s, response to something that would appear to be a dramatic communication directly from God. With Our Lady’s tears as a powerful supernatural reminder of the eternal God, the Bishop was offered an unparalleled opportunity to publicly deplore all manner of sins, from priestly misconduct to sexual promiscuity in society as a whole, to greed in the financial sector, to mothers terminating the lives of their unborn children, to selfish materialism, to indifference to the needs of our neighbors, and to the loss of faith in Jesus Christ himself. Yet, to many, close to the events, the Bishop dropped the ball.
In 1991-92 in Lake Ridge, Virginia (in the diocese of Arlington) there was an incredible display of weeping statues, crucifixes and other images plus rosaries and statues changing color, a priest with stigmata wounds, some inexplicable healings, strange signs in the sky and the scent of roses where there was no reason for it. Surely this was something the local bishop would understand must be acknowledged? What else could it be but a communication from his “boss”( Our Lady appears at the will of the Father) unless it could all be explained by natural phenomena or there was some kind of massive fraud and trickery going on? And if not from God, what kind of bishop would not understand the need to investigate and protect his flock from false beliefs? Yet the bishop of Arlington, John R. Keating, ordered his priests and tried to tell everyone else not to even acknowledge the amazing signs of divine intervention.
The reason given was a hurried and trivial explanation that there was nothing to investigate since there was no message involved. No message involved!? The messages found in Our Lady’s tears in 1992 are unrivaled in their fervent and agonizing display of emotional pain. If someone dear to you is sobbing without words, do you think there is nothing to inquire about? Or to be concerned about?
But the Bishop and the Chancellor chose to ignore Our Lady’s tears. They dismissed Our Lady’s cries despite a long history of Church approved miracles - Akita and Sicily come to mind - similar in nature to the events taking place in Virginia. The bishop looked away and dismissed Our Lady’s tears seemingly only concerned with what the “world” might think of plastic statues weeping tears from heaven. In hindsight we can now see that the reputations of the institution took precedent above an extraordinary religious event.
Supreme Court Justice Scalia questions lack of an investigation
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is equally baffled and has been haunted by the miracles for nearly twenty years. Justice Scalia has publicly brought up the mysterious events numerous times. According the the diocese of Arlington Judge Scalia mentioned the events in a speech in 1996 and then again in an October 2010 speech to the St. Thomas More Society in Annapolis, MD. Justice Scalia called it “irrational” to ignore miraculous signs like those that happened in and around Lake Ridge in 1991-92. He noted the powerful draw that such signs have for the unbelieving and how an investigation by the diocese might have filled the pews with nonbelievers seeking to determine if their lack of faith was misplaced.
Scandal involving the Chancellor
Some have speculated that Bishop Keating was perhaps unduly influenced by his Chancellor, Monsignor William Reinecke, who was later revealed to be an accused pedophile and who took his own life in August 1992. But, no, I think not. If Reinecke were the villain in this piece, Bishop Keating should have been shocked enough by his suicide to go on his knees to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Lake Ridge to beg forgiveness from the Virgin Mary for his callous disregard of her tears. But nothing came out of the diocese except a stony silence and orders to the Arlington Catholic Herald to print no word and accept no advertising from anyone attempting to promote the weeping statues and other signs.
Perhaps Bishop Keating received a curt summons to report home and explain himself because in 1998 he died in his sleep while on a visit to the Vatican in Rome.
Bishop Loverde continues the stonewall
Sadly, Keating’s successor, Bishop Paul S. Loverde, has been equally adamant about refusing to undo the error of his predecessor and open an investigation into what we might call “The Seton Miracles.” No acknowledgment of what happened, no investigation, no prayerful reflection about them, just stony silence. Although we are called to believe the powerful miracles of Jesus (and I totally do), apparently we can be more dismissive of miracles that happen closer to home and in our own time. Isn’t this pretty much the position of the Sanhedrin at the time of Jesus?
Pope John Paul II acknowledges weeping statues to be signs from God
You might question with full indignation who am I to question a bishop? Good point. You don’t have to rely on anything I say. But a very recent pope well on his way to canonization said explicitly that weeping statues belong to the order of signs. “[Mary] is a mother crying when she sees her children threatened by a spiritual or physical evil.” (Pope John Paul II at the dedication of the Shrine of Our Lady of Tears in Syracuse, Sicily, 1994). This dedication commemorated weeping by a single bas-relief of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for a mere four days in 1953. The weepings in 1991-92 were geometrically greater in scope. Too bad the archbishop of Syracuse wasn’t in charge of the Arlington diocese. You would never have had to read these words.
Pope Benedict XVI asked of his Cardinals and Bishops "We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred." Why should the bishop of Arlington be able to ignore his responsibility to investigate signs from Mary when the Holy Father has said otherwise? This is the question that every Christian believer, especially Catholics, should ask the bishop of Arlington. He owes the faithful an answer.
James L. Carney
Author of The Seton Miracles, Weeping Statues and Other Wonders
(editor's note: Mr Carney has given up all rights to his book and receives no compensation from its sales)
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