Who says religion has lost its mystery? "Miracle warning", declared Kerry's Eye, "Men will die." Kevin Tracey, a Christian Brother teaching in Limerick, said that "a Heavenly warning, that will precede a great miracle, will be seen and experienced all over the world at the same time. This warning will be seen in the sky and will be so frightening that men will die. Those who believe in the apparitions of our Lady of Garabandal believe this warning will come within the next two years, very possibly this year."
Keep your calendar open at Thursdays at 8.30 p.m., because that is when the miracle will happen, according to Conchita Gonzalez, the "principal visionary of Garabandal" who lives in New York with her husband Patrick Keena, who is of Irish descent. Conchita is one of four child visionaries of Garabandal who claim they received many apparitions from the Blessed Virgin during the 1960s.
We'll have eight days' notice of a miracle, but even then some of us will die from emotional shock at seeing this fire in the sky which doesn't burn the skin, said Kerry's Eye.
"It will be visible all over the world in whatever place anyone might be, whether you're downtown shopping, at work or at home. It will be like the revelation of our soul, and it will be seen and felt equally by believers and people of any religion . . . Even if you hide in your room and close the blinds, you will not escape it," said Brother Tracey, who is available to give talks.
The Nationalist and Leinster Times produced another warning: "Religious sects are after more than souls." A meeting of Carlow County Council heard allegations that "religious sects" operating in the south of the county are targeting old people who are immobile and living alone.
"There have been five cases of this in the general Borris area over the past two months," Mr Michael Meaney told his colleagues on the council. "Last week two people called to this woman's home at 8 p.m. and did not leave until nearly 2 a.m." The Nationalist and Leinster Times also reported on a county councillor's eager search for a mobile bull service, a subject which somehow arose during the council's discussion of complaints concerning a hayshed fire.
"What has artificial insemination and the fire service in common? Nothing it would seem unless you are Councillor Jimmy Murnane," wrote Michael Godfrey. "Then the answer is simple. Neither have a call-out service in the county," he said.
"It's a joke," said Mr Murnane, "There is nothing left in Carlow."
HE complained he had been unable to find a bull earlier that day. "Not everyone can keep a bull full time so I went looking for one today but all I got was a mobile telephone number . . . It's a load of bull. If we can't keep a bull in the county then we may as well forget about it," he said.
"But all's well that ends well. Later in the day Mr Murnane was contacted on his mobile telephone and informed that the bull had since done the business," said the newspaper.
Also on the subject of "the business", the Kerryman declared: "Clinton's women trouble identifies niche tourism market for Kerry."
Women Trouble plc is a fledgling Kerry tourism company which intends to market the swirling Celtic mist as the ideal libidodampener. "The strongest selling point in our mission statement, code-named Zipper Special, is that virtue in Ireland is lack of opportunity," the company's spokesman, Mr Walt Killjoy, told Breda Joy. "Our plan is to facilitate top US executives suffering from Women Trouble in the land of opportunity by introducing them to therapy in a sex-free zone in the land of no opportunity. Put simply, we aim to knock the teaspach off them."
LEADER funds are being sought for the high-security mountain top holiday village where highflyers can remain as chaste as the monks of the Skelligs. However, local reaction has been hostile. "Zipper Bill has another think coming if he thinks he is going to play around in Ballybunion just because he's been in the rough lately," one disgruntled local said.
"The buds of Ballybunion are strictly off bounds given all the hullabaloo about his alleged peccadillo."
A Macroom-based Welsh transsexual is urging Irish trans-sexuals and transvestites to seek help, said the Corkman. "Diane", an electronics engineer, has been living with "her" wife Susan and their nine-year-old son in a quiet rural area near Macroom since 1993. Diane is undergoing sex-change hormone treatment in anticipation of a five-hour sex change operation within the next two years.
