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No. 32 (New Series)
Spring, 1996
Marian Shrines: Signs of the Pilgrim Church Pilgrimage to a place where a grims set out on route to Marian significant event has occurred can shrines: 10 million to the shrine be both a profoundly human and a of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico), 6 million to Lourdes religious experience. Each year thousands search out their family's (France), 5 million to Czestochowa history or the places where our (Poland), and 4 million to country's history was forged. Aparecida (Brazil). Pilgrimage is part of the major In academic theology, shrines religions of the world: Christian, were never given any recognition, and their existence hardly acJewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. In the early and medieval knowledged. The old Code of Canon Law and Vatican Council II路 Church, people spontaneously did not refer to shrines. The traveled to Bethlehem and Jerusalem, to the tombs of the apostles relation of a shrine to the local church was not clear, nor was any and martyrs at Rome, and to the churches and shrines containing type of canonical or episcopal relics of saints. During the middle recognition extended to shrines. ages, Santiago de Campostello in Pope Paul VI (1963-78) played northwestern Spain and Canterbury no small role in starting the in England were well-known movement of ecclesial reflection places of pilgrimage. on the role of shrines within the Medieval literature frequently life of the Church. In the 1960s, recounts stories of people on at the meetings of rectors of pilgrimage, and at times their Marian Shrines in Italy, he urged conduct lacked the decorum them to "lift their voice and let associated with a religious their existence be known in the Church." In annual addresses to activity. The abuses both of those responsible for shrines and those responsible for Marian "Mary, Model of the Church "-From the Mary Garden of those making pilgrimage were shrines, he was concerned with of St. Catherine's Church, Portage, Michigan . Gerald denounced by Erasmus and the role of shrines in the liturgical Westgerdes (Zanesville, OH). (Replica of the original). other reformers. To curb abuses, and pastoral life of the Church. Based on two passages of Scripture: Genesis 3:15 and the Shrines, he said, were "spiritual church authorities in the 17th Book of Revelation, ch. 12. Note the serpent of Genesis, the clinics" (1965), "testimonies of and 18th centuries placed dragon of the Book of Revelation, and the roses, the sign of eve/'s defeat. miraculous deeds and of a restrictions on pilgrimage, continual wave of devotion" sometimes even closing shrines (1966), "luminous stars in the Church's sky .... centers of which were associated with fraudulent practices. devotion, prayer, recollection, prayer, and spiritual In the 19th and 20th, the Marian apparitions of Lourdes, refreshment" 0970). Knock, La Salette, Beauraing, and Fatima gave rise to great The 1983 Code of Canon Law included for the first time centers for prayer. Although people came to find healing some provisions related to shrines. A shrine was defined as and strength, and to experience for themselves the miracua "church or other sacred place to which the faithful make lous event which had occurred, these Marian shrines pilgrimages for a particular pious reason, with the approval contributed to renewing the sense of pilgrimage in the of the local ordinary" (c1230). Paul VI's wish that shrines Church. Today, about 80% of the shrines in the Catholic be centers for an intense Christian life (un punto d'intensita world are dedicated to Mary. Each year, millions of pil-
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