Necedah Shrine

Necedah Shrine (officially "Queen of the Holy Rosary, Mediatrix of Peace Shrine" ) is a Marian shrine located in Necedah, Juneau County, Wisconsin, in the Diocese of La Crosse. On November 12, 1949, Mary Ann Van Hoof (1909-1984) claimed to receive a vision from the Blessed Virgin Mary. In her various visions, Van Hoof asserted that she was told to "bring the truth to people" through prayer and the Rosary. The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize the shrine, and put Van Hoof under interdict.

Visions

Van Hoof maintained that she received nine visions between November 2 1949 and October 7 1950. Pilgrims have seen Van Hoof in a state of religious ecstasy. The messages were recorded on a tape recorder, and long hand by at least two people. Some messages were repeated word for word, but in most cases Van Hoof was inspired by her own language. There were 100,000 people attending vision on August 5 1950, and witness accounts vary significantly. Many messages were given at home.

Van Hoof was said to have suffered the Passion of Our Lord on the Fridays of Advent and Lent. Testimonies from doctors vary significantly.

Van Hoof was told in a vision that the most perfect way of offering mass is the Tridentine Mass approved by Saint Pius V and the Council of Trent in the Western Roman Rite Church. She was also told that the Novus Ordo mass developed during the Second Vatican Council is watered down. Believers believe in modest dress, not talking with the priest before mass, only priests should distribute communion, not taking communion by hand, and oppose numerous other changes from Vatican II.

Believers are building a new "House of Prayer" at the spot of the visions.

Interdict

Van Hoof and her followers were put under interdict by the Roman Catholic Church; the church considers the visions of Mary Ann Van Hoof of the Blessed Virgin Mary to be false, and Bishop John Patrick Treacy of the Diocese of La Crosse had ordered the Necedah Shrine to be closed in 1950. Van Hoof and her associates did not obey these orders, however. Bishop Treacy's successors also refuse to recognize the shrine. Bishop Frederick William Freking, Treacy's immediate successor, excommunicated Van Hoof and anyone else associated with her shrine, precipitating her final schism with Roman Catholicism.[1]

Criticism

There is some doubt as to Van Hoof's actual orthodoxy. According to one critical website, she was brought up as a spiritualist, and her first husband was a divorcee, which would have been illegitimate under church doctrine, as would her subsequent divorce of her first husband, and remarriage to Ted Van Hoof, as well as her third marriage to her final spouse, Ray Hirt. In the first and third cases, there may have been no marriage certificate.

However, this did not stop Mary Ann Van Hoof and Myrtle Sommers, a collaborator, from maintaining and recording 'disclosures' from a 'traditionalist' Marian apparition manifestation at the site. In the Library of Congress, there are two volumes listed as credited to the Queen of the Holy Rosary Mediatrix of Peace Shrine, and dated until 1978. However, as their website notes, it still maintains some commemorative and merchandising services.

Unity Publishing, an orthodox and non-schismatic conservative Catholic organization, notes that other associated Old Catholic shrine habituees have had other difficulties. In 1987, "Father" Garry McLaughlin was convicted of mail fraud, while David Schott, another 'Old Catholic' priest, was later convicted of paedophile offenses against an eleven year old boy. With the alleged assistance of Shrine personnel, he escaped custody. Harry Binkowski, another Shrine acolyte, shot and killed Tommy Huber, an associate. The police were called, and Binkowski, an apparent survivalist, was shot dead. It was later learnt that he had amassed considerable armaments in his on-site dwelling: [2]

As for the content of the alleged revelations, there are repeated references to 'imminent' Chastisement, a thermonuclear World War III, Soviet submarines, and accusations that the mainstream Roman Catholic hierarchy and Papacy have been subverted, which is akin to other uncorroborated Marian apparitions like the one that allegedly occurred at Bayside and Flushing Meadows, New York. According to Unity Publishing, at the end of the world, a spaceship will transport "the faithful" to an underground civilization, "Middle Earth" [3].

Since 1975, the shrine has disaffiliated itself from mainstream Roman Catholicism, affiliating itself instead to an Old Catholic 'traditionalist' schismatic organization, the "American National Catholic Church." A former Old Catholic "Archbishop", Edward Stehlik,who had prevously presided at the shrine, was married twice beforehand. According to Milwaukee media cited on Father John Loughlan's website [4], he misled others about a faked former past as an ordained Catholic priest and a Discalced Carmelite monk. He later attempted to become an Episcopalian priest, and also asserted that he was gay.

Fidelity Magazine, a Catholic periodical, quotes one of Van Hoof's messages, in its February, 1989 Issue as detailing that the devotees of the Necedah Shrine would be spared Armageddon when, right before the world's doom, a 1,200 year-old man named Joe will come in a spaceship to save them.

Aftermath

The shrine currently runs a private 'traditionalist Catholic' primary school, established in 1982, as well as a Visitors Center. Despite local Wisconsin Catholic hierarchy disassociation, the shrine still conducts business and is strongly affiliated with conservative Catholic anti-abortion politics. It is also integrated into an associated network of schismatic 'traditionalist' Catholic "Marian apparitions" that usually go unrecognized by the mainstream US Catholic hierarchy. According to Father John Loughnan's website, the Necedah Shrine may have served as an inspiration for Mrs Veronica Lueken's Bayside Marian apparition in New York, as Mrs Lueken apparently lived in Indianapolis in 1953, and may have visited the shrine.

Although his study focuses on Lueken and the Bayside Marian apparition, Michael Cuneo's framework of traditionalist Catholic apocalyptic dissent is also applicable to Van Hoof and the Necedah Shrine. As with the Bayside apparition, the Necedah Shrine message referred to a Chastisement, promoted an anticommunist and apocalyptic worldview, which incorporated elements of conspiracy theory. In addition, it regarded the Catholic Church and Papacy as convulsed by institutional crisis, which meant that its 'seer' and her followers could rely on their own thaumaturgical (or magical) claims to authority rather than adhere to magisterial or papal assessment of the veracity or otherwise of her visions. Unlike Bayside, however, Van Hoof and her followers relinquished their Catholic ties, rather than accept the authority of the institutional church.

Bibliography

• Cuneo, Michael. "The Vengeful Virgin: Studies in Contemporary Catholic Apocalypticism" in Millennium, Messiahs and Mayhem. Henry Robbins and Susan Palmer, editors. New York: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0415916496
• Maloney, Marlene. "Necedah Revisited: Anatomy of a Phony Apparition" Fidelity Magazine (Volume 8, Number 3) February 1989 pg. 18-34. E. Michael Jones, editor. ISSN 0730-0271
• Queen of the Holy Rosary Mediatrix of Peace Shrine
• Swan, Henry My Work With Necedah Necedah: For My God and My Country Inc, 1959.
• Van Hoof, Mary Ann and Myrtle Sommers. Revelations and Messages as Given Through Mary Ann Van Hoof at Necedah Wisconsin: "Volume 1: 1950-1970", "Volume 2: 1971-1975" Necedah: For My God and My Country Inc., 1978.
• Zimdars-Swartz, Sandra. "Religious Experience and Public Cult: The Case of Mary Ann Van Hoof." Journal of Religion and Health 28 (1989): 36-57.
• Zimdars-Swartz, Sandra Encountering Mary: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0691073716

See also

• Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
• Veronica Lueken

External links

• Necedah Shrine
• Apparitions in Necedah
• John Loughnan's website on Necedah
• Case, Thomas W. "The Tridentine Rite Conference and Its Schismatic Cousins" Originally published in Fidelity Magazine, 1993