The holy war over a visionary in a cardigan

Fr McGinnitty knows how to pay lip service to Vatican II and make all the appropriate caveats, but he seems to have great disdain for the Council and what he has called "the so-called Catholic return to scripture in recent decades".

In Christina Gallagher he has found a convenient ally. Visions such as the one she had of the roof being stripped away from a church by demons are interpreted to mean that liberal priests "who are dead in the spirit of God" are throwing away the "treasures of the Church." And lest anyone point out that two popes were involved in the work of the Council, Christina is given a message from the Virgin that "this pope is guided spiritually in a greater way perhaps than other popes were".

The church authorities take a dim view of all this. So much so that Cardinal Daly, the Primate of All Ireland, issued a warning three weeks ago. "As we approach the Millennium, we find a proliferation of alleged visions, apparitions, messages purporting to be of Christ or Mary," he told pilgrims at the official shrine to Mary at Knock. "When there is not ecclesiastical approval, it is well to maintain a prudent reserve or scepticism in respect of such phenomena. Even when official approval is given there is never any obligation to believe them.

"One worrying feature is the emphasis on divine wrath and punishment, the preoccupation with the devil, the morbid warnings about the doom awaiting the world. The emphasis seems to be on fear rather than on love, on foreboding rather than on hope, on anxiety rather than on peace of the soul."

He would not have been pleased last Sunday to have seen Fr McGinnitty producing a relic of St Philomena and offer to bless pilgrims' "religious articles" with it. This saint is one of those, like St George, whom the Vatican removed from the official church calendar, pronouncing they were merely legendary with no proof that they ever existed. The Pope is clearly wrong on this one as Fr McGinnitty has a bit of her body.

Nor would the cardinal have been impressed by Fr McGinnitty's long advert - albeit one delivered from his knees - for the House of Prayer's shop and its various wholesome products. One of the most pointed of the cardinal's warnings in his Pentecost homily was: "If a prominent feature or the messages or the devotions is the collection of money . . . as though those who did not contribute were disobeying a direct request of Christ or his Mother, this would be a negative sign and a warning of the danger of something possibly unwholesome and inauthentic".

The cardinal's displeasure might increase further were he to purchase one of the shop's tapes and hear Christina pronounce that when the Time of Chastisement arrives the house will be used by "the remnant of the Church, as a shelter. It will be a protection for those who are there and those who are in this house will experience heaven in its fullness". Moreover this privilege would be extended to all those who had made donations and whose names were "recorded in a book - the names, the amount, the date - kept in the House of Prayer. Our Blessed Mother said she'd be interceding not only for all those present but for all those names written in this book."