Catholic miracles defy any explanations

[prodromos]

immaturity

Packermann is adamant that Bernadette has suffered no bodily corruption. You claim the Catholic Church does not hide the fact that it has touched up her body to hide the deterioration of her body. Why is it that you never correct your fellow Catholic?

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

Had you researched balazaar, you would found the evidence, the statement of doctors, and I think even one of the english books is now avaialable free in PDF although the originals and some of the reference works are in portuguese.
I used it as a simple example.

"According to her Vatican biography, from March 1942, for about 13 years until her death, she received no food except for the Holy Eucharist"

What is hard to understand here ? VATICAN BIOGRAPHY says she had at least BREAD and WINE. Does that sound like she did not eat anything nor had to use toilet ?

 

[prodromos]

I

"According to her Vatican biography, from March 1942, for about 13 years until her death, she received no food except for the Holy Eucharist"

What is hard to understand here ? VATICAN BIOGRAPHY says she had at least BREAD and WINE. Does that sound like she did not eat anything nor had to use toilet ?

I hardly think a biography would include details on how often they did or didn't go to the toilet.

 

[Lost4words]

People who dont understand Catholicism and always criticise Catholicism will also ridicule and demean Catholic miracles.

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

I hardly think a biography would include details on how often they did or didn't go to the toilet.

Really ? So if someone did not go to toilet for decades as MountainMike asserted, and it is considered a miracle you think they would not mention it at all in a biography ? Seriously ?

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

People who dont understand Catholicism and always criticise Catholicism will also ridicule and demean Catholic miracles.

I am fine with Catholic miracles as long as people do not really try to explain them. Just say it is a miracle no evidence required lalalalala I believe. Fine, that is pretty much bread and butter with every religion and their miracles.

But when I start hearing about suppresssed test results, only Portuguese text on proof, assertion that forensic labs duh accept this and she does not eat she is holy when her Vatican made biography says she does eat and drink I tend question why people need to try to scientifically defend something that is clearly undefendable.

 

[prodromos]

Really ? So if someone did not go to toilet for decades as MountainMike asserted, and it is considered a miracle you think they would not mention it at all in a biography ? Seriously ?

Yes, seriously. Living solely off the eucharist is more than enough.

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

Yes, seriously. Living solely off the eucharist is more than enough.

More than enough if you do not care that you weight 33kg as an adult, but you can survive.

However MountainMike asserted the following without any links naturally...

Hospital trial confirmed
"did not eat, did not drink (which will kill you in days), did not defecate, did not urinate" For decades

Which according to Vatican is inaccurate since as has been repeated gazillion times here SHE TOOK EUCHARIST so SHE ATE AND DRANK and following that she also had to RELIEVE HERSELF even if her biography does not mention every time she went to loo.

Again what is so hard to comprehend here ? What is the problem here in understanding ? Where is the miracle part ?

 

[prodromos]

Again what is so hard to comprehend here ? What is the problem here in understanding ? Where is the miracle part ?

A small piece of bread and a sip of wine each day (if it was each day) cannot sustain a human body.

 

[Root of Jesse]

Just a minute. I did not say miracles do not happen. I did not say that Protestants are opposed to miracles.

None of that.

What I passed along was an explanation that I did not invent. It has been said by others. The suggestion was that Protestants do not look to miracles SUCH AS THOSE WHICH WERE FEATURED IN THE OP.

Those are gimmick type miracles. Something like an on-stage magician does for the amazement of the audience--miracles that serve no purpose UNLESS it is to confirm and/or strengthen the belief system of the onlookers.

Catholics are impressed by such things but it is suggested, with good reason, that Protestants, by and large, don't look for them and they don't make the faith of the viewer more real even if such things might happen. If they are actually of God, he knows who needs to see them and who, by contrast, is not in need of hocus pocus.

Riiiiight. An 'on stage' miracle that has been displayed unchanged for 200 years, on a canvas that normally doesn't accept pigment, and which normally lasts 25 years max. Riiight. The conversion of Mexico to Catholicism. At about the same time that Luther was pulling 5,000,000 Catholics away from their faith, 10,000,000 Aztecs becoming Catholic. An 'on stage' miracle. Riiiight.
I think you're focusing on the flash-bang moment of each one, and not seeing the effect of any one of them. The point of any of the miracles is to convert souls.
And even if the sun didn't move that day in Fatima, the people en masse believed that it did, and were returned to their faith. Portugal, at the time was persecuting the Church, and moving toward atheism, so it was a big deal.

 

[GingerBeer]

A small piece of bread and a sip of wine each day (if it was each day) cannot sustain a human body.

I agree that a small sip of wine and a small piece of bread will not sustain an adult human being for long. Claims that it did are likely not true.

 

[Mountainmike]

Now.

Go back to what you were told.

A group of atheist medical doctors doing a controlled hospital trial, certified precisely what I said. And when after 20 days she passed the test they extended another 20, before make the statement " beyond science to explain".

She was a bedridden paraplegic, so nipping unseen to the toilet was impossible.

Lack of fluid is a fast killer, and in her case weight did not change, and - even if Eucharist was under both species , and even if daily , and under both species , 40 sips of wine is not enough to survive


The history of communion under both species for lay people is very recent , and in traditional countries still not widely practised. In Portugal in which I am partially resident it is an exception. Fatima sanctuary generally serves one species still, and so too in smaller churches, so for her eucharist will normally have been wafer

And this is so extraordinary that certainly her MANy biographies confirm it, which is precisely why a trial was demanded to prove it.

Please re read. Clinical trial.

You let your prejuduce override clinincal observation,
You think you know better than trained witnesses when you were not even there,
How many medical qualifications do you have?
You also place limits on Gods power .

You confirm why miracles are often discounted. Or forgotten.
Sheer Arrogance, on your part to think you know better.

i suggest you try it.

"According to her Vatican biography, from March 1942, for about 13 years until her death, she received no food except for the Holy Eucharist"

What is hard to understand here ? VATICAN BIOGRAPHY says she had at least BREAD and WINE. Does that sound like she did not eat anything nor had to use toilet ?

 

[Lost4words]

A miracle is something that is beyond human understanding.

God is all powerful and if He wants someone to stay alive on just the Eucharist then so be it.

I believe in God.

 

[Mountainmike]

I agree that a small sip of wine and a small piece of bread will not sustain an adult human being for long. Claims that it did are likely not true.

The problem you face is " clinical trial" which is why I picked it as an example.

The claims were considered impossibke / outrageous, and an atheist administration wanted it investigated to show it as a fraud.

So a hospital trial with 24/7 monitoring was set for 20 days, during which she neither ate , drank, defaecated nor urinated. Assuming foul play the trial was extended fir 20 more days with tighter security, still she passed the test.
The doctors ( one a university professor) testified to the trial saying it was beyond science to explain,

I should point out Alexandrina is not unique,
Therese Neumann the stigmatic was just the same - consuming only Eucharistic wafer infrequently,
Neumann is even more interesting, an uneducated peasant who had a supernatural knowledge of languages she can never have heard, let alone learn, such as Aramaic. That knowledge confirmed by european authorities

Why do you doubt the power of God?

 

[packermann]

A faith based on miracles is not a mature faith, but God may work among any people anywhere at any time, so I can neither judge these particular ones nor recognize them.

I hope that by the grace of God I never have a mature faith. We should be mature in all other ways but not in our faith. If there is one thing that is killing faith in our modern age is a "mature faith". We need the exact opposite. We need a simple, child-like faith - a kind of faith that professes "the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it". My wife once told her sister that she believes in a heaven and a hell - her sister though it was childish for one to believe such things. A mature, sohisticated faith is the kind of faith that laughs at someone believing in the "fairy tales" of the Bible.

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 18:3

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.
Luke 18:17
When I was a Protesant in college, I went to Campus Crusade for Christ. I met a guy there who became my best friend. After graduation, I went to a conservative Protestant seminary. My friend went to a liberal seminary. I started to see a change in him. He no longer had a child-like faith. His faith became more "mature". He prided himself in this. He saw the Bible far more complicated than he saw it beforehand. He said that he saw all these errors in the Bible. The Bible was no longer the Word of God. It only contained the Word of God, and some of of the other parts were very human and very fallible. It is up to us who are sophisticated in the faith to find out which parts are the actual Word of God.

We went our separated ways. I found out that he died. I was saddened that died he had stopped going to church. That is what a "mature faith" had done for him - he may have lost his faith. It was too much beneath him to believe in "gimmicky" miracles such as Moses causing the parting of the Red Sea, or a leper king being healed by going in the river Jordan seven times, or a man waking from the dead when the bones of Elisha were placed on top of him, or that Jesus walked on water, or the shadow of Peter healing people. But after a while, even the resurrection of Christ starts looking gimmicky.

Reject these miracles because of evidence that you have. Even reject them because you think that they are of the Devil. But for the sake of your soul, please do not reject them because they are somehow beneath you. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

 

[packermann]

Apparently the Catholic Church does not want people to know this, otherwise why is the evidence of decay hidden?

How can it be hidden when they present pictures? Some are perfectly fine. Some show some decay. Look them up.

 

[packermann]

I cant comment on every one of the so called miracles mentioned in the post, however the 2 above are hardly miraculous.

As I mention, even if one or two can be refute (which I do not think you did) you still have the others to contend with.

The so-called 'Incorruptible body of St Bernadette' shown above, apparently isn't so incorruptible at all.

I noticed that you did not provide the link for your source. So are we supposed to take your word for it? I now work for an industry heavily regulated by the FDA. The FDA has a saying: It is not documented then it didn’t happen. So since you did not document anything, why should we not assume that someone told you what someone told him that someone told him…?

It would indeed be miraculous, if the body was preserved as well as is shown in the picture above, however the visible face & hands are made of WAX! The rest of the body, that is fully covered in clothing, is black & somewhat decayed, & is covered by a type of magnesium salt, which can be used to preserve bodies by drawing out moisture & drying the skin.

St. Bernadette died in 1879. She was not exhumed for good for good until 1925 which meant that the earlies they would have applied any wax would have been 46 years after her death. So even if this magic wax could prevent decay (I do not know why funeral directors don’t just use wax instead of formaldehyde. It would be much cheaper and can keep a body incorruptible indefinitely).

This miracle should be renamed 'Catholic Hoaxes that HAVE an explanation'

You mean that they have an undocumented explanation, which is no explanation at all. And don’t forget – this undocumented explanation has to still explain how this magic wax can reverse the decaying process that had happened 44 years before it was applied.

The other miracle mentioned is Miracle of our Lady of Guadalupe

The claim that 'the pigments was not any pigments on earth' is false, & the so called 'people in her pupils' are nothing more than specs of paint, that look nothing like people, even under magnification. There are also claims that the cloth is made from cactus fibre, which should only last for 10 to 15 years, however an examination of the thread has found that the cloth is made from hemp, an extremely durable fibre which can easily last for 100's of years.


So just another Catholic Hoax, NOT a miracle!

Documentation, please. If no documentation is provided then it is nothing but hearsay.

The image is actually of Tonantzin, a Mexican goddess, however, the Catholic church, like they did with so many other pagan gods & customs, merely changed the name of the images of the goddess Tonantzin in Mexico to the virgin Mary.

This is an old anti-Catholic argument that proves too much. If it disproves Mary this same line of argument also disproves Jesus Christ. Examples of a dying and rising god are found in Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, and Dionysus (see Dying-and-rising deity - Wikipedia). So if similarities between Mary and other pagan religions discredit Mary then similarities between Jesus and other pagan religions would also discredit Jesus.

I would prefer to think that God is behind all this. Just as God prepared the way for His Son and His mother to the Jews with OT prophesy so did He prepare the way for them to the pagans by placing in their their religions a foreshadowing of Jesus and Mary.

 

[packermann]

So all the dead Catholics should be dug up every 20 years to check up if God is giving us a hint ?

This is only done when a person has been known to have heroically sought to live a holy life and is already considered for canonization.

 

[packermann]

I'm sorry, but that's just silly IMO. But maybe you are trying to say something else and it just didn't come through.

I did not think I was saying anything controversial here. I am reading the posts here from Protestants. Even you refer to the miracles I listed as “gimmicks”


But in my experience within Protestantism, with almost half the time in Pentecostalism, I found that the non-Pentecostals were against miracle and Pentecostals were for them.

Well, I definitely meant only to refer to actual gimmicks such as most of the points in the OP.

This is a very specious argument. So only CATHOLIC miracles are gimmicks!

I must say that I have never heard that interpretation or POV, so I cannot comment on it. Maybe there are some Fundamentalists, etc. who think that way, but I doubt it.


In Christianity, cessationism is the doctrine that spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues, prophecy and healing ceased with the apostolic age. This is generally opposed to continuationism, which teaches that the Holy Spirit may bestow the spiritual gifts on persons other than the original twelve apostles at any time. Cessationists believe that when the Old Testament canon closed at Malachi, for the next 400 years until John the Baptist, the gifts had ceased. Similarly, when the New Testament canon closed the gifts ceased.

Cessationism - Wikipedia


Examples of famous scholars and pastors who believe in cessationism to some degree cited in this article are B.B. Warfield, John Gresham Machen, F.N. Lee, John MacArthur, Peter Masters, and John Whitcomb.


Historically, the Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Moravian, and Pentecostal traditions of Christianity have been continuationist [the belief that miracle continue to this day] while the Continental Reformed and Presbyterian traditions have been cessationist.

Cessationism versus continuationism - Wikipedia

The Bible doesn't have to tell us everything that goes on under heaven, you know, for it to accomplish its purpose.

This question was not directed to God but to us. I asked how you can one hold to sola scriptura and yet believe that spectacular miracles ended with the death of the last apostle when there is not single verse in the Bible that says that these miracles would ever end? You are not God. God does not have to give an answer for His actions. But we do.

No. That is obviously quite different.

If it is obvious that Jesus walking on water is not gimmicky and Jesus causing some of His devout followers to have incorruptible bodies is gimmicky then it should be easy for you to explain the difference. Please do so.

Well, we know exactly why Jesus turned wine into water--it was to please his mother who asked for his help when the wine ran short.

Wow! I thought I would ever see a Protestant admit that Jesus seeks to please His mother. You are closer to Catholicism than you be think!

Are they discouraged? And what would a magisterium have to do with any of God's miracles?

Suppose a man in Protestantism says that Paul or an angel appeared to him. And suppose that Paul or the angel said to this visionary that there is another letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Who within Protestantism could be the judge if this real or not? There is no central magisterium! Some will believe that we have a Third Letter of Paul to the Corinthians some will not! Some will want it to be included in the Bible and some will not! It would be a mess!


But Catholics have no such fear. The Church will decide (it will probably decide it is not a miracle). Whatever the Church choose, the Church will be in unison. That is something lacking in Protestantism.

That may be so. Are Pentecostals the subject of this thread?

I did not start this conversation in this direction. I was not the one who said that Protestant do see the need to validate their faith by miracles. I am just pointing out that Protestant Pentecostals do.

Excuse me, but the church does not make God's miracles what they are.

I never wrote that. Of course, the Church does not MAKE God’s miracles. But each one of us has to determine whether a supernatural was an act of God, caused by the devil, or has some natural explanation. This is not “making Dod’s miracle”. You can go to your pastor and ask him if that event is authentic. And we can go to our pastor and ask him if it is authentic. The only difference is that even you would admit your pastor can be wrong.

Yes, its true that if you lump a bunch of different churches together it is always possible to say that they are in disagreement about something or other, but it doesn't prove anything more than that.

That in itself proves a lot!

I could do the same thing by lumping all the Catholic churches together--Roman, Eastern, Old Catholic, etc. etc. and, having done so, proclaim that they don't all believe the same thing!!

They are not all Catholicism. That is the point. The Roman is Catholic Church. The Eastern is Orthodox. The Old Catholic is Old Catholic. The Orthodox Church does not consider itself part of the Catholic Church and the Old Catholic does not consider itself part of the Catholic Church. They are not any more part of the Catholic Church that the Protestant churches are part of the Catholic Church. Just because they do not consider themselves Protestant does not mean they consider themselves Catholic.


But the Baptist Church considers itself part of Protestantism. The Reformed Church considers itself part of Protestantism. The Lutheran Church considers itself part of Protestantism. And yet they disagree with each other.


Also, there is one thing that all these three Protestant Churches have in common – they all hold that only the Bible is our sole source for truth, at least for salvation. But they cannot agree even on matters of salvation. They also agree that one must rely on the Holy Spirit to read the Bible. But each denomination thinks that they themselves are relying on the Holy Spirit and the other two are not. So which one is relying on the Holy Spirit to understand the true meaning of the Bible?


Now, with the Roman, Eastern, Old Catholic churches, they are not in agreement on the source(s) for truth. The Roman Catholic Church view the sources for truth are scripture, tradition, and the magisterium. Both the Orthodox and Old Catholic Churches reject the Roman Catholic magisterium. So obviously they would differ since they do not agree on the sources of truth. Also, some of the Old Catholic are in communion with the Anglican church, a Protestant Church. So the Old Catholic would be closer to Protestantism than to Catholicism.

 

[packermann]

I myself got to see a myrrh streaming Icon of the mother up close and rather privately (just me and a few monks/priests). It was one of the most life changing things I've experienced- not from the miracle itself as much as the full presence of the Mother of God and the Holy Spirit in that room. It was unlike anything on this other than one Hierarchical Liturgy I went to in order to see two monastic ordinations, and later a tonsure. These things are real. My abbot described the same thing when he saw the in corrupt relics of St. Alexander of Svir, who was touched by a vision of the Holy Trinity.

Thanks for sharing that! Praise God and bless His holy mother!