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Talking Texas History
Talking Texas History
Sun Breaks, Mary Speaks: The Forgotten Texas Miracle
During the Feast of the Assumption on August 15, 1988, thousands gathered for an outdoor Mass in Lubbock where many reported seeing miraculous signs when the clouds parted and sunlight broke through. The apparition of the Virgin Mary drew 15,000 people to this West Texas church, yet it's a largely forgotten moment in Texas religious history.
In this episode, we discuss how the Catholic Church responds to claims of apparitions, establishing investigative commissions that examined the Lubbock event, and our conversation expands into why religious history matters for historians, "You can't understand American history if you don't understand Americans' religiosity."
Whether you're fascinated by religious phenomena, Texas cultural history, or the methods historians use to understand seemingly supernatural events, this episode offers a window into how faith and skepticism coexist in both religious institutions and historical inquiry.
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the past.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. I'm Scott Sosby and I'm Gene Preuss, and this is Talking Texas History. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Preuss, I'm Scott Sosby, gene.
Speaker 1:As we're recording this, catholics are in the news. We see a lot of headlines about the Vatican and various other things about Catholicism in the news today, but you have something that's somewhat related. It's a new research project or something that you've been working on. And what is that? It is a new research project that some of you have been working on.
Speaker 2:And what is that? Well, you're right, this was a project. I kind of unveiled it publicly when we were at the West Texas this year, in San Angelo, august 1988, there was around August 15th, which is the Catholics have the feast, the celebration, the commemoration of the Assumption of Mary, and this is when Catholics believe that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven. She did not die and buried on the earth, and there's a reason they believe this. And so there was a lot service because there were so many people there that they couldn't fit them all into the church. So outside and there was, it was a hot day, right, it's August in Lubbock and it's hot, and people were outside and there were clouds covering the sun and at the time of the service the clouds broke open, the sun shone forth and many people started taking this as a sign, as a divine revelation, and that some people said they saw the Virgin Mary, an apparition of the Virgin Mary there, and so that became news and a lot of people talked about it. It got national, it got international recognition for a while, and so I wanted to talk about that and I wanted to talk about the history of that event.
Speaker 2:I wasn't in West Texas, in Lubbock in 1988. I didn't come for another, I guess 93, so another four or five years. I was in graduate school in San Marcos at the time, working on my master's degree at Texas State what was in Southwest Texas. But I think I heard about this and the funny thing was is that I didn't really know much about it until I was trying to think about what they call the Lubbock Lights Miracle and I was Google searching this and trying to figure out when that happened. And that was the 1950s when people thought they saw a UFO in Lubbock Sky.
Speaker 1:A lot of drunk people in Lubbock.
Speaker 2:So I started doing Miracle. I couldn't remember what the name was, what they call it miracle law book, and I came across this apparition, um, and I was watching a video documentary on it, and my mother-in-law who's uh, from level land out in the west area. She says, oh, we went to that, she remembered it, and so she and my sister-in-law had gone. Mary didn't go because Mary was, like, I think, 12 years old at the time and stayed at home. But we talked to John Brock, our good friend John Brock, with Texas Tech University Press. I was talking to him. He goes oh, I remember going to that, we went to see that. It was a thing that a lot of people I think they had somewhere several thousand people, maybe 10,000, 15,000 people who showed up. It was a big deal, yeah.
Speaker 1:I could In 1988, I would have, you know, I was 1988, I would have been living in Midland, going between different places, doing other things, but I seem to recall at least some news coverage of that and such like that. I mean, you know 1988, I was still fairly young so I wasn't really tuned into a lot of things going on, but I seem to remember something like that and I remember something about it. Tell me, as you research this and things you go on this and it's good about it and you got engaged with that. Just tell me a little bit about the whole. You know, the Catholic Church has always you know, I'm very ignorant of this, You're not always. You know, I'm very ignorant of this, You're not.
Speaker 1:The Catholic Church has always there's been some mysticism, you know, and apparitions have been a part of, to some extent, the theology, I guess, of the Catholic Church. What is it? Why do people believe? Why do Catholics believe in these apparitions? I mean, what is the doctrinal part of it behind it? And the saints, and even, you know, some people have supposedly seen jesus right, uh, in some scenes. So tell me, just tell the readers a little bit about and, you know, inform us about how that comes about well, you know, it's kind of funny because a lot of times that you know people care about oh gosh, uh.
Speaker 2:I remember, around the same time, you know, somebody said I've opened up my bag of Cheetos and I found Jesus in the toast that we heard one time.
Speaker 2:Jesus in the toast or the tortilla or on a tree, and there's something you know. So so look a lot of this and this is this is a great question. So look a lot of this and this is a great question. A lot of this really, the Church doesn't endorse or espouse or believe in. But there's a lot of right, a God, and that God does communicate and does intervene in the lives of people right Otherwise we wouldn't have celebrated Easter, otherwise, you know, we wouldn't have creation. So the church certainly believes that.
Speaker 2:But the church is also very skeptical and the church actually has a long history of being skeptical about these so-called miracles and so-called apparitions or visions. And they like to go out and investigate them, you know, because they don't want people believing in superstition or mythology. People say well, that's what the Catholic Church is all about. Well, you know, the Catholic Church for over a thousand years were the ones who had the universities and had the scientists and had the philosophers and had, you know, they believe there's a strong tradition of reason and faith. So when somebody says that there's an apparition, a divine being or a ghost or whatever you want to call, it appears the church investigates gates and they actually have. They sent. It's in canon law, it's in the church law of how they set up these commissions to go out and and really investigate and interview people and figure out what's going on. So, uh, that all being said, what what happened was, let me give you a little background on on what goes on. What's this?
Speaker 1:st john newman. This St John Newman always strikes me. I mean, I don't know, I haven't been in Lubbock. It's kind of a unique Catholic church in Lubbock. Is that correct in that sense, I mean, or maybe different than some of the others?
Speaker 2:Certainly. I mean I've driven by it a hundred times because it's right on 114 going out to Leveland and the Lubbock Loop, so you know it's in a very heavily traveled area. But in 1988, or in the years leading up to that, it was not much. I mean, they had low membership. They were always in arrears and in their bills and in their donations apparently the pastor of the church at the time, the priest of the church, joseph James, was always giving sermons about. You know, you guys need to tithe, you need to, you know, help support the church because they were facing tough times and there had been, I think, a lot of that.
Speaker 2:If we look at American history this is coming in as a historian looking at it from a broader picture what's going on in American history is that a lot of people had been in the 80s, were moving away from churches, and not just the Catholic Church but a lot of churches in particular, and so at the same time there's a movement away, but then there's also the rise of these megachurches, and that really is the 1980s, you know, and these here in Texas we have a lot of these megachurches, and so St John Newman was actually doing something a little different and what James was. They were charismatic. Now people think well, catholics and charismatic, it's like oil and water. They don't mix this idea of the healing and speaking in tongues and other Pentecostal-type practices that were popular. They had gotten popularity in the late 60s, especially among youth groups, and that was kind of exploding in the American mainstream Christian denominations. And in the 1980s I worked at a, and probably one of the reasons why I remember hearing about this is I worked at a Christian radio station in Austin and that's kind of how I paid my way through my undergraduate years in college. That's kind of how I paid my way through my undergraduate years in college At a Christian radio station. What they used to call a dollar, a holler. As long as you had some money and you could buy some time, you could put your show on. I heard a lot of different types of people's religious practices and charismatic movement was growing in popularity at that time and so it infiltrated the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church started adopting it.
Speaker 2:And you know not everybody, and I know there were certainly some Catholics who kind of looked askance at that. So in that way St John Newman did have—it was a little unusual and there were apparitions going on at the time the most—and I'm going to butcher this name Medjugorje in what's now Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the time, you know, there had been reports and a lot of people had been flocking there Like they go to Lourdes or some of the other traditional apparition sites that the church had actually investigated. And the church says, yes, this is a real apparition and we believe that it was a divine message. But they have not done that with Medjugorje, although there had been a lot of people that had gone there and it was very popular in the 80s and in fact the priest out at St John Newman's in 87, I think, had made a trip to Medjugorje and he had said that of what was going on in Lubbock is that Lubbock would be the new Medjugorje of the US and what had happened was 1987, pope John Paul, very popular right comes through Texas and one of the things that he does he was in San Antonio.
Speaker 2:My aunt went out to the audience there, to the service there. He had declared 1988 as a year consecrated to the Virgin Mary, a Marian year, and this was. He just wanted you know, devotion people to be more attentive and you do more prayers and more focused, and so you had a lot of things going on. We're coming upon a new millennium, communism is starting to fall apart, so there's unsettlement in the world and so people are looking for answers. And so the church believes that a lot of time, when people are looking for answers, they tend to see things, they tend to read more into things. To see things, they tend to read more into things. And this is why when somebody says there's an apparition in a time of crisis, they really go in and look and is this something that we should put faith into or not? And so this is what happens. In Lubbock.
Speaker 2:People said they saw this miracle of the sun and these things that are traditionally associated with other apparitions, that the church sent an investigative team. The local bishop, sheehan, michael Sheehan, called in for a team and it was headed by a priest in Dallas who was teaching at the theological seminary there. His name was Frederick Jelly. So the Jelly Commission very sweet came in and did an investigation five members and they said they were kind of up in the air about it. What had happened was in the year before. So all this is going on right. So background so the year before when the Pope in 87 calls for a Marian year.
Speaker 2:They start. The members at St John Newman and other parishes were doing the same thing. They start having these prayer groups where they're doing the rosary and what happens is three people a woman named Mary, constancio Mike Slate and Teresa Werner Constancio, mike Slate and Teresa Werner started saying that they were receiving messages during their prayer times about renewal. The church is going to be okay, especially John Newman, which was always in trouble. Right, they were going to be okay. That trust in Jesus. And so they started writing down these messages that they were getting and they started being published and this started spreading the news that Mary was talking to these people and this increased. Their prayer groups began to grow. More people started coming to the church and more and more people got interested. And so at a time when you start off the year, where there's maybe a couple hundred people coming to Mass, and then on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in mid-August, you've got 15,000 people coming to this church. You know things are happening and people are starting to take note, and so this is kind of the events and kind of the background.
Speaker 2:Why does the Catholic Church look to Mary? Well, to many in the Church. Mary was one of the first saints of the church. Right, she the mother of Jesus, the mother of God. You know she appears several times in the New Testament that she's with him. Now you know there's other times that maybe she's concerned about what Jesus is doing, but she's supportive. She's there when he is executed, when he's crucified, and was among the disciples who met after he was resurrected and comes back. So was there to the end and the apostles took care of her until she died, to the end, and the apostles took care of her until she died.
Speaker 2:But the Emperor Constantine, whose mother this is 300 years later whose mother was an avid Catholic, and his son and grandson, they wanted to collect all the saints' remains and bury them in Constantinople where he was the emperor. And so they found a lot of the apostles' remains and bury them in Constantinople where he was the emperor. And so they found a lot of the apostles' remains and stuff started bringing them to Constantinople. But when they started looking for Mary's remains, they could never find any. And the researchers who were going out and looking came back and they said well, the story is that she disappeared, that she was taken up into heaven, and so that's where the assumption comes from. But it's because of the saint. So the church, when it starts investigating, they want to make sure that there's reason to believe, that it's not going to hurt anybody's faith, or it's not going to go against the teachings of the church or against the Christianian beliefs or traditions.
Speaker 1:Um, and before they'll put a uh, a stamp of approval on it so what is the official church stance on the apparition in saint john newman, and how often do they stamp such apparitions, perhaps as legitimate that that's the right word to use?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. Surprisingly rarely, you know, you hear about like we were talking about earlier, joking about earlier Jesus and the Cheeto, jesus on the tortilla, the Virgin Mary, you know, here, there and yonder Is that the church dismisses a lot of that and they ignore it. Here's the official church teaching is that all the saints, especially Mary, it's not about worshiping them. And the church says we do not worship Mary. A lot of people say well, you prayed, or something like this. Well, because the church believes that we are eternal right, and so when we die physically, our souls live on, and so what we're doing, they say, when we're praying to saints, is that we're praying to people who are their souls, are around, and they're one of the things that they do is they pray for us, we pray to them, they pray for us and they're right there sitting next to God.
Speaker 2:So they have, you know, a first-hand account there. They have his ear and you know what else are they doing. But they so, but all things have to lead back to Jesus, right? Nothing can deviate. They don't like new revelations. Well, I know we've been believing this for several thousand years, but I was told this secret by Mary that you know, whatever the church does not like that and the church does not believe that. So all things have to point and what they're saying is that if this increases your devotion to Jesus, to God, that's fine. If it takes it away from it, then we get suspicious about it. So that's how they judge these things. How many people have seen it, what's happened and all this other stuff? So they come in and investigate, they look around, they try to see what, what, how are people reacting to this, and if it appears inconsistent with what the church teaches, they will not approve it. So here's what they said on these messages, and I've got a book in my hand here. There's a book that has several hundred of these messages.
Speaker 2:And we have a little newspaper downstairs that my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law saved from 1988. It's like a little comm.
Speaker 2:Commemorative of the apparition. Yeah, from the Lubbock AJ. That had a whole bunch of these in them and this new book is a little bit more complete. But I mean, there were hundreds of them and there's just little statements and most of them are just saying pray more, do this, encouraging people to increase their Christian devotion. So the church said we don't know that this was a miracle, but we don't think it's bad, it's right, it's all. There were some that some people had some questions about. There were a few of them that people. It seemed a little vengeful or maybe we don't like, you know, it didn't seem consistent with the others. So they, they, so we, you know these. These are problematic, but for the most part they were okay there wasn't anything wrong with them?
Speaker 1:If there were, like you mentioned, there at mass afterwards after that, and we're gonna, 15,000 people showed up at a mass and, you know, had to hold these things outside or whatever, and has that carried over at the church? Do you know what has been the effect on the church of this apparition?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, that's a good question. That's something I really need to do a little bit more research on. I've kind of just started on this and so I'm just looking at the event and how the church reacted to it. But that's a good question. I mean, the church is still there, right, it's still active.
Speaker 2:But the official word because the Church said we don't think these are miraculous the bishop, the guy who's in charge of the Catholic Churches in that area, told the priest in charge of that church, the pastor Joseph James, bishop Sheehan told him you need to put a lid on this. Right, it's not, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not official, it's not been recognized. And so I don't know that. There was another priest from France, a theologian, who came over and talks about this and he says, well, he thought there was some animosity, but I don't know. And there's a somebody wrote a little biography of the priest Joseph James, and there's pictures of him and Sheehan together afterwards. So you know doing things with Mary Consacio, one of the people who got these messages. So I don't know that the I don't know that it was really any animosity.
Speaker 2:You know, in the Catholic Church it's a hierarchy, right, the bishop's in charge of the area. The bishop says need to put a lid on it. A good and faithful priest will follow the direction of his superior right. And so, okay, we're going to. But in shallow water, there is a group made up of people who, some of them who had received these visions, and they're still growing strong. They have a ministry, they do live streaming of prayer services and whatnot, and so they're still going. They do retreats. They're still going strong here. How many years later? 40 years later? So it's still ongoing.
Speaker 1:Interesting and you'll do research into it, you'll find out more.
Speaker 1:We a friend of mine, a friend of both of ours I'm not going to say his name because we both know him but it came up one time when he and I were in graduate school and he was Catholic. It came up one time and he and I were in graduate school and he was Catholic and he went to church at Christ the King there in Lubbock, which is, I'm assuming, one of the bigger churches there in Lubbock, and I don't know how this came up. I just now remembered it came up one time about hey, you know, and I was being flippant, in fact somebody at St John Newman saw Mary one time. I didn't know the details about it, and he made a comment to the extent of, well, yeah, well, st John Newman's kind of a weird place anyway, and it's a different kind of Catholic church, and so that's why I've always kind of like, well, I guess he's Catholic, he knows what he's talking about. Do you think that's because of that event, or has it always been held out as a different type of play?
Speaker 2:Well, I think. I mean I don't know what they're doing today, but I mean, certainly this idea of the charismatic would have set them as being different from traditional Catholics. I mean, you see this fight going on right now. You know, I was watching the news and you know, now that Francis has passed on, people are saying well, when they elect the new pope, is it going to be the conservatives or is he going to be more liberally minded? Is he going to be American as well? You know, and I'm glad people are interested, but you know, things like the conclave or some of these other things, these are works of fiction, right? They're fictive works and people take them as well. This is how it really works. Well, it's not entirely true, is it?
Speaker 1:political In the Godfather 3,. That's not how it actually works.
Speaker 2:Maybe, maybe there's more truth to that, but you know, so it's hard to know. I mean, nobody knows really what goes on because it's a closed door meeting and you know we hear reports and you know there is, I mean, the cardinals know, and we've got, you know, a Texas. The former archbishop Cardinal here in Houston, who just retired at the end of March, is going to be there for the conclave. I mean, he, for all I know, could be the next pope. You just don't know. And it's how they vote. They're try to be prayerful about it and try to figure out who is going to be the best representative to lead the church.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I mean there's some conservatives, yes, there are more traditionalists. But let me tell you a little secret. So, out of this charismatic movement, you think, well, you've got people like Benedict, who people see as being very conservative. You've got John Paul II, who people are seeing being more liberal, more open-minded. Both of their priests, right, and so the Pope goes to Mass too, right, and there is a priest that does the preaching they selected. In the preaching, the fellow who did that was charismatic.
Speaker 2:So you know, it's a big church and there's different rites, there's different practices, there's different beliefs. So within that church, there are factions right, there are conservatives, there are more moderates. There are factions, right, there are conservatives, there are more moderates, there are liberals. There are different people who like this type of practice, other people who want to do the Latin mass, only want to do, you know, the charismatic, the speaking in tongues and the healings, and so there's a lot. It's a big church and a lot of people find room. And is there tension? Well, there's not supposed to be, but I'm sure there is.
Speaker 1:Well, that brings up. I think we can end with this kind of more discussion, because we're historians and such this thing happened in Lubbock and you're researching it and various things. But why should we care? We're historians, why do we care about things like this?
Speaker 2:You know this is a great question and I'm going to tell you I've actually been doing or running across religious history for a long time and actually and I didn't intend to, but when I started you know I'm an educational historian looking at how education develops. Education develops and the way we see education kind of emerged out of the 1830s movements, the reform movements and a lot of that. You know, whether you're talking about how people were treated in prisons or in mental institutions, education, health care, a lot of this is influenced by the Second Great Awakening and abolitionism was influenced by the Second Great Awakening and these religious movements and revivals of the 1830s.
Speaker 1:And so yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started. You see a lot of this influence and tappans, and and and others, and a lot of these people were religious. So I started looking at religious history. I had a, you know, moderate interest in that. I wasn't opposed to it, and so I would see these themes come up from time to time. But religion is a big part of our American culture and our.
Speaker 2:American past. You know, Thomas Jefferson wrote a version of the Bible. Benjamin Franklin wrote some religious tracts. One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a Catholic bishop.
Speaker 1:Somebody once said you can't understand the South unless you understand pigs. I would riff on that and say you can't understand American history if you don't understand not just religion in America Americans' religiosity.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and you know it's. I think we tend. You know, you and I are both political historians. We were raised to look at things from a political perspective, but there's also a religious. It's part of it's part of all cultures, it's part of all history, and wars were far over it. People were elevated to positions of authority because of their religious beliefs, and religion has played a role in all world history and we tend to discount it because we tend to be more materialistic. Right, we are looking at documents and evidence, and if you can't prove it that way, then we don't like to talk about it. But, as you're saying, people's religiosity and how they interact, their faith that's part of American culture, and not being trained as a cultural historian is something that I'm looking into, right'm looking into right, and it is this the idea of people's faith, people's culture. In fact, I, you know, about 10, 15 years ago, I created a course, uh, on religious history. Now we got somebody who was actually a religious historian to teach that, but I taught it the first couple of years, um, and it was just.
Speaker 2:I was amazed at how much I could bring in other parts of American history, because it's not just people react to events and they look at it from a religious perspective. I picked up a course. Somebody got sick at UHD and I picked up the course she was teaching. Got sick at UHD and I picked up the course she was teaching and she had this book looking at the Civil War and how the Civil War soldiers perceived it. Right, both sides thought God was on their side and what did they do when it turned out he wasn't and how did that affect Americans on the Civil War? And so you know, you see this faith, you see this culture. There's a great book I use when I'm teaching Mexican-American history on the first Catholic church, spanish-speaking Catholic church in Houston, in Texas historiography. You know there's been a lot of history of religion Carlos Castaneda, castaneda Library.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What's it? Our Catholic Heritage.
Speaker 1:Our Catholic.
Speaker 2:Heritage, seven volumes, you know, and Almaraz, felix Almaraz, did a lot of work on it. There's a Texas Catholic Historical Association and they meet along with TSHA and other groups and so there's a lot of people who are looking and you know we interviewed Brian looking at religious, jewish religious history. So religion is something and we ignore it and don't pay it much attention, very much, but it's a part of American life and Texas life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, that's true. Well, american life and Texas life yeah, yeah, well, that's true. Well, gene, this has been enlightening. We don't get to talk about apparitions very often on something like this. I hope you go forward with this. It'll be interesting to see what your final product, as you research this, is.
Speaker 1:Well, this is the second in a row that we've done that. It's just us. We didn't have guests, on which people are probably like God. These people need to go back to guests, so that means we've already established that we don't know anything.
Speaker 2:So I guess we just have to hear it. Is that right? That's right. Thanks for listening. We'll see you again soon. Thanks everyone, Bye-bye.
