Searching for Mary

by Mark Garvey

Thousands of people are flocking to sites where apparitions of the Virgin Mary are said to be appearing. This growing phenomenon has become more than just a following. Searching for Mary is a personal account of Mark Garvey's travels to nine sites across the United States-from Bayside, New York, to Conyers, Georgia, to California City, California-where the visions have been seen. Through conversations with those attending the events, the mystery, spectacle, uncertainty, and absurdity that is often a part of this Marian worship is revealed. Casting a critical, journalistic eye on the thriving congregation, Garvey puts the cults of Mary in psychological and historical perspective. Providing the intellectual background necessary for a full understanding of what draws believers in, Garvey also discloses the questionable validity of the apparitions and the disapproval of the Catholic Church. Searching for Mary is an enlightening look at a fascinating phenomenon nearly as old as Christianity itself.
• This is an ever-growing phenomenon; apparitions continue to be reported all over the world.
• Mark Garvey's unique, worldly, personal approach is witty and endearing, appealing to Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
• Searching for Mary is the only book of its kind.
• Garvey visits nine sites throughout the United States, giving this book regional appeal.

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1998

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Garvey dozen excellent job of staying unbiased and respectful while investigating Marian apparitions in the United States. It is amazing to me to thousands and thousands of people go to these apparitions every year and yet I've never heard of any of them. There were times in the book when I just couldn't believe how stupid people are. I know that's not nice to say, but some it was just beyond belief. For example, there was a banner hanging at one of the apparitions, it was nighttime, and 1000 pictures were being taken of the banner – with flashes, and there were people going into ecstasies because they said the flashes of light, which were clearly from the cameras, were a sign of Mary's divine power. In other cases, pilgrims pointed their cameras at the sky and when the camera pictures had glare on them, they said the glare was Mary's powers coming down to earth. Garvey describes how a Polaroid camera, when Pointed at the sun, imprints a rectangular shaped image on the picture – that's the inside of the camera lens. Yet he was stopped by hundreds of people saying that they had captured the "door to heaven" on their Polaroid picture, and they assured him that it only worked on Polaroid cameras. He showed remarkable restraint and never told them that their pictures were a fraud and that they were Looney Tunes. I don't know how he managed to stay so neutral and unbiased and respectful. Some of these people just seemed absolutely crazy. To be fair, none of these apparitions sites were approved by the Catholic Church – but I couldn't believe that thousands and thousands of people apparently go to these things, these places just to stand in the heat and pray the rosary while watching the woman (in almost all cases it was a woman) staring at something, which of course nobody else could see, for several hours. Garvey also describes a number of prayer services were women and men were "slain in the Spirit" a phenomenon that I witnessed when I was involved in the Catholic Church as a teen. I went on Catholic retreats where they were priests praying over people, and some of the environments that were similar to those that the author describes. I never experienced anything supernatural and neither did he.

I really think that whole books could be written about some of these apparitions, rather than just a chapter. The one in Bayside was especially interesting and disturbing, with its holy UFOs and prophecies of doom