Wisconsin on the Map to Pray With Mary

CHAMPION, Wis. — In France, the shrine at Lourdes is surrounded by hundreds of hotels and has received as many as 45,000 pilgrims in a single day. Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico, draws millions of fervent worshipers a year.

Now, a little chapel among the dairy farms here, called Our Lady of Good Help, has joined that august company in terms of religious status, if not global fame. This month, it became one of only about a dozen sites worldwide, and the first in the United States, where apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been officially validated by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1859, the year after Mary is said to have appeared in Lourdes, a Belgian immigrant here named Adele Brise said she was visited three times by Mary, who hovered between two trees in a bright light, clothed in dazzling white with a yellow sash around her waist and a crown of stars above her flowing blond locks. As instructed, Ms. Brise devoted her life to teaching Catholic beliefs to children.

On Dec. 8, after a two-year investigation by theologians who found no evidence of fraud or heresy and a long history of shrine-related conversions, cures and other signs of divine intervention, Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay declared “with moral certainty” that Ms. Brise did indeed have encounters “of a supernatural character” that are “worthy of belief.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/us/24mary.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

Pedophile enablers

http://www.wicourts.gov/ca/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&seqNo=20657

¶26 Intent is inferable from conduct. State v. Hecht, 116 Wis. 2d 605, 623, 342 N.W.2d 721 (1984). There is sufficient evidence of Feeney’s conduct from which to infer the requisite intent.

¶27 First, when Feeney assaulted the boys in their rooms and asked Todd about a girlfriend, he had already assaulted Troy during confession after asking about girlfriends. He lied to Sharon about why he was going to the boys’ rooms, claiming he was going to hear prayers. He assaulted both boys in similar fashion, starting with his hands on their chests but evidently seeking their genitalia. In Troy’s case, Feeney repeatedly pulled the covers from his body. These actions sufficiently demonstrate intentional acts. The similarities and repetition destroy any inference the contact was accidental.