CAREY, Ohio — Every August, thousands of Catholic pilgrims converge on this rural community in northwest Ohio to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary on the feast of the Assumption.

This year, however, a confrontation between some of the pilgrims and a group of Protestant protesters disturbed the peace of the celebration, ending in the arrest of eight pilgrims for disorderly conduct.

The pilgrims are Iraqi Chaldean Catholics, for whom Aug. 14 is a special day to gather in Carey with family.

“It's a feast day,” said Conventual Franciscan Father John Hadnagy, pastor of Our Lady of Consolation, “but also for them it is family reunion time.”

In a scene that has been repeated annually since 1875, pilgrims come from Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania to Our Lady of Consolation Basilica and National Shrine for Masses in four languages, confession and devotions. Chaldeans have a special devotion to Mary, Father Jacob Yasso, pastor of Sacred Heart Chaldean Parish in Detroit, said, and revere her “more than usual.”

But since the Street Preachers' Fellowship has been coming to Carey, tension has been building between the Protestant group and the pilgrims. On Aug. 14, while Father Hadnagy was leading afternoon devotions in the basilica, a crowd of pilgrims tried to force the street preachers out of the area around the shrine.

Carey Police Chief Dennis Yingling said about 18 street preachers had begun pontificating on three street corners in the area.

“Within about seven or eight minutes,” he said, “we estimated 250 to 300 people — young males — came at them to remove them from the area.”

Police, who were already there for crowd control, responded by getting the street preachers out. The melee was over 20 minutes later, ending with the arrests of eight pilgrims on misdemeanor charges. All were released on bond.

When it was all over, several of Father Yasso's parishioners were among those arrested. Father Hadnagy said many of them are Iraqi Catholics who fled religious oppression in their native country.

“They come here expecting religious freedom and they encounter this, and they take it as religious oppression,” he said.

Father Hadnagy said he believes the street preachers come to disrupt the observance and to antagonize pilgrims.

“They hand out their literature, but they also have placards with ‘You're going to hell’ written on them,” he said. One parish staff member reportedly heard a protester call Mary “a whore,” Father Hadnagy said. “That got some of our pilgrims inflamed, and some of the young people got very angry, and that's basically what set off the incident,” he said.

Ron McRae, director of Street Preachers' Fellowship, agreed to answer questions about the incident via e-mail, but did not return responses to them.

But McRae told Dave Hartline's Catholic Report news website that the street preachers “never had time to say anything to anyone.”

“They were viciously attacked before they could get 10 seconds of quoting the Bible out of their mouth,” McRae said. “We do believe that Catholicism is contrary to the Holy Bible and preach that Catholics just like Muslims, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, or any other religion need to repent of their sins and turn to Jesus Christ alone for salvation, or they all will go to hell.”

He said no one from the fellowship has ever claimed the Virgin Mary was a whore. “We do preach that the Mary of the Catholic Church is not the one of the Gospels, and as Rome attributes to her as being the ‘queen of heaven,’ such is condemned in Jeremiah 44.”

The Street Preachers' Fellowship, based in Johnstown, Pa., has come to Carey for the last five years to carry signs and hand out leaflets objecting to Catholic devotion to Mary.

According to the fellowship's mission statement, members “preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the open air, in strict obedience to the Scriptures.” The group also has appeared at such events as a National Organization for Women march in Washington, D.C.; Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the 2004 Super Bowl in Houston.

Chief Yingling said the street preachers were acting within their rights and always abide by rules that allow them to be on the sidewalk outside the church as long as they don't block pedestrian traffic.

He said the protest group had met with police this year in hopes of avoiding trouble.

“We asked them to do that after last year,” he said. “They never get out of line. Street preachers are very intelligent and educated. They realize what they're allowed to do and not allowed to do and they obey the law. And they are very polite and supportive of law enforcement. They never give us any trouble at all.”

Father Hadnagy said of the protesters, “These people are not peaceful people. They're being painted by the authorities as being peaceful people. They're not. These people have everybody running scared.”

The Assumption observance in Carey begins with a novena nine days before the feast. With each successive day, the crowd builds until 8,000 to 10,000 are gathered for the Aug. 14 evening candlelight procession from the basilica to an outdoor shrine, where Mass is celebrated.

In Carey, members of the Street Preachers Fellowship claimed that Catholics worship Mary and that the dogma of the Assumption is contrary to the Bible.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 971) states that devotion to Mary is not the same as the adoration given to God.

“The Church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship,” it says. “The Church rightly honors the Blessed Virgin with special devotion. From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of ‘Mother of God,’ to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs. This very special devotion differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration.”

Furthermore, although the Bible uses symbolic language about the assumption (see Revelation 12) , Jason Evert of Catholic Answers points out that this does not mean it didn't happen. Other instances of bodily assumption, such as that of Enoch and Elijah, are in the Bible, but not every historical event that occurred while the Bible was being written is included in its pages, he said.

Catholic author Patrick Madrid said the Street Preachers group tries to disrupt public events by practicing what they regard as free speech. “They would say their aim is to try to get people to convert,” he said, “but their tactics essentially are harassment, bullying, name-calling and sloganeering.”

Judy Roberts is based in Graytown, Ohio.