Knock Shrine Airport: A Monument to Conciliar Materialism
The Catholic News Agency portal (November 29, 2025) celebrates the 40th anniversary of Ireland West Airport in Knock, crediting its existence to the late “Monsignor” James Horan, a post-conciliar cleric who allegedly sought to boost pilgrimage traffic to the Knock Shrine. The article glorifies the airport’s record passenger numbers, its economic impact, and Horan’s “visionary” pursuit of state funding and lottery schemes to complete the project. It notably highlights visits by antipopes John Paul II (1979) and Francis (2018), framing the airport as a spiritual-economic success story.
Economic Idolatry Masquerading as Pastoral Care
The article’s core thesis—that an airport constitutes a spiritual achievement—betrays the conciliar sect’s inversion of Catholic priorities. Quas primas (1925) unequivocally declares: “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony” (Pius XI). Horan’s obsession with infrastructure, however, reduced the supernatural mission of the Church to material development, prioritizing job creation and tourism over the salvation of souls. His “jumbo quiz” fundraiser—offering cars, houses, and heating oil as prizes—epitomizes the conciliar shift toward Mammon worship, where sacramental economy is replaced by literal economism.
“He loved country people in particular because he was one of them,”
the article quotes Tom Neary, Horan’s associate. Yet this false pastoral sentiment ignores the perennial condemnation of usury and gambling in pre-1958 magisterial teaching. Pope Benedict XIV’s Vix pervenit (1745) explicitly condemns lotteries as vehicles of moral corruption, while Horan’s transatlantic promotion of a “jumbo quiz” institutionalized greed under the guise of piety.
Knock Shrine: A Dubious Foundation for Apostasy
The article unquestioningly accepts Knock’s 1879 apparitions as authentic, despite their theological contradictions. Unlike approved Marian apparitions (e.g., Lourdes), Knock featured no verbal message, reducing Heaven’s communication to a silent tableau—a detail exploited by modernists to evade doctrinal accountability. The shrine’s promotion by antipopes compounds its danger: John Paul II’s 1979 visit inaugurated the neo-pagan ritualization of Catholic sites, while Francis’ 2018 stopover weaponized the location to push his syncretistic “family” agenda.
The claim that Knock draws 1.5 million visitors annually proves nothing but the conciliar sect’s mastery of naturalistic spectacle. As the Holy Office warned in Lamentabili sane (1907): “The Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Proposition 63). Knock’s airport-enabled tourism exemplifies this surrender—a “pilgrimage” industry stripped of penance, doctrinal clarity, or the imperative to convert.
The Antipapal Stamp of Approval
The article’s reverence for antipopes exposes its theological bankruptcy. John Paul II—a heretic who kissed Korans and hosted pagan rituals at Assisi—is cited as lending legitimacy to Knock, while Francis’ 2018 visit is framed as a divine endorsement. This illustrates the conciliar sect’s idolatry of personality, where apostates masquerading as “popes” reconsecrate Catholic spaces to the service of globalism.
“The pope had a particular devotion to St. Joseph… which added to its appeal for him,”
the article states, ignoring Francis’ documented contempt for Tradition. His “prayers for abuse victims” at Knock were a calculated publicity stunt, deflecting from his own complicity in covering up clerical crimes worldwide.
Sacrilegious Syncretism in Concrete and Steel
Horan’s statue at the airport entrance is a fitting symbol of the conciliar cult: a man-made idol greeting travelers before they encounter the counterfeit sacredness of Knock. The article admits that “large-volume pilgrimage charter flights are gone,” proving the project’s spiritual failure. Economic metrics—950,000 passengers, Ryanair’s 12 million customers—are paraded as triumphs, reducing the Church’s mission to a logistics corporation.
Pius XI’s Quas primas condemns such secular entanglements: “Rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ… for his royal dignity demands that the State should take account of the commandments of God and of Christian principles”. Horan’s reliance on government funding and EU grants (detailed in the article) shackled the Church to atheistic regimes, violating the Syllabus of Errors (1864), which anathematizes the notion that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Proposition 55).
A Blueprint for Ecclesial Devastation
Knock Airport stands as a monument to the conciliar heresy—a fusion of Modernism, capitalism, and false ecumenism. Its 40-year “success” mirrors the neo-church’s broader apostasy: empty sacraments replaced by tourism, dogma supplanted by economic pragmatism, and the Reign of Christ traded for EU regional development grants. As the true Church teaches through Pope Pius IX: “The Roman pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” is an error (Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 80). Horan’s airport embodies this condemned proposition, cementing Knock’s status as a shrine not to Mary, but to the Antichurch’s surrender to the world.
Source:
How Knock Shrine led a priest to build a successful airport (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 29.11.2025