Our Lady of the Island: \nOur Lady of Lourdes grotto reproduction and use in \ntwo Newfoundland communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Replicated Catholic grottos are local religious shrines fashioned after famous Catholic sites. Many of these reproduced shrines are dedicated to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and are designed after global Marian apparition sites, such as Our Lady of Lourdes in southwestern France. Replicated grottos play a part in Catholic communities through collective identity, religious narrative, and individual and communal devotions. Researching the replication of Lourdes's shrines can offer insight into the religious practices of groups and communities and the spiritual nuances of vernacular belief. This thesis examines two replicated Our Lady of Lourdes grottos in Renews and Flatrock, Newfoundland, and Labrador, Canada, by locating how these communities creatively negotiate local devotional sites. The central focus of this thesis lies in both the material context of these grottos and the oral narratives which have developed around them. These memetic edifices developed as a form of “creative theology” by the people and for the people (Cunneen 1996, xvii). I offer three arguments in this work. First, Our Lady of Lourdes reproductions are vernacular (folk) sites similar to the original French grotto site in its initial stages. Second, these replicated grotto sites are ostensive reproductions based on the legendary accounts of Bernadette’s experiences at Lourdes and should be recognized as such. Third, these reproductions are feminine in form and message; therefore, during a time of Church turmoil concerning clerical abuse, they offer an alternative to male-dominated places of Catholic worship. Using historical and ethnographic approaches, this work recognizes replicated Our Lady of Lourdes grottos as sacred spaces that are part of Newfoundland and Labrador's oral, historical, and visual religious culture. As such, they deserve to be recognized within the religious and cultural tapestry of Atlantic Canada.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".