Miracles: Our Lady of Guadalupe

I was recently reading some discussion of a new book

which argues that many more professional scientists have religious belief than is commonly acknowledged. Of course the conversation devolved into the tired old argument that religion is somehow irrational, specifically that there is no evidence for religion at all.

I would like to reject this. There is evidence for a specific religion, specifically, miracles.

Miracles often get written off out of hand by skeptics. But if one wishes to be objective and rational, it seems that there is an onus on the skeptic to at least examine the strongest proported miracles to see whether there is anything to them. Thus I propose to do a short series of posts highlighting some of the more outstanding miracles associated with the Catholic Church.

My criterion is simple: I wish these examples to be current, things that can be seen today if possible, or at least things that have been recently documented by modern science. I do not wish to throw out examples that could be dismissed as legend or as unverifiable.

Exibit A: The tilma of Juan Diego.

First the backstory. Juan Diego was an indigenous Mexican (specifically an Aztec); At the age of 47 he witnessed the Spanish conquest of Mexico under Cortez. Shortly thereafter he converted to Catholicism.

On 9 December 1531, on his way to Church, he heard his name being called. He ran up a hill toward the voice and there saw Our Lady. She told him to tell the bishop she wanted a shrine to her built on the spot. She promised,

I will demonstrate, I will exhibit, I will give all my love, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people. I am your merciful mother, the merciful mother of all of you who live united in this land, and of all mankind, of all those who love me , of those who cry to me, of those who seek me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their sorrow and will remedy and alleviate all their multiple sufferings, necessities and misfortunes.

He reported this to the bishop, but the bishop did not believe the message. Juan Diego returned to Our Lady and begged her to send another messenger. She told him to go to the bishop again the next day. He did so, and again the bishop was incredulous. Juan Diego returned to her, and she promised that on the next day she would give him a sign.

On the following day, Juan Diego found his uncle ill, and wished to find a priest to administer Last Rites. He tried to avoid the hill on which Our Lady had appeared to him. She came to him none the less, assured him that his uncle would not die, and took him to the top of the hill where she showed him roses. This alone was miraculous, for no flowers bloomed there in the relative cool of December.

Together they arranged them in his tilma (a cheap over-cloak). Again Juan Diego went to the Bishop, and threw open his cloak, the roses--a variety native to the Bishop's own Castille, not to Mexico--fell on the ground. Moreover, on the inside of the tilma, there was found an image of the Lady, dressed in the stars with the moon under her feet.

The bishop, now believing, feel to his knees and within two week ordered the shrine build on the hill. Within ten years, it is said, over 9 million Mexican indians converted.

Juan Diego kept the tilma with the miraculous image until his death in 1548.

Forty years later, the then-current bishop had a copy of the image sent to Spain. This image was flow on the flagship of the Christian fleet at the historically crucial victory of Lepanto.

To this day, Our Lady of Guadalupe is venerated, especially by Mexican Catholics, but generally by American Catholics, as the patroness of the Americas. The image is now on display in massive Basilica in Mexico City, erected on the hill. This place is today the second most popular place of pilgirmage in the world (second only to the Vatican).

Now, crucial bits of this story obviously are difficult to verify. But what is not so difficult to verify is the miraculous nature of the image on the tilma, for it is, as I said, preserved to this day.

First, the very fact that the image has survived for almost 500 years (at this date 479) is itself remarkable. The tilma is made of a cheap cloth, woven from cactus fibers, which typically decays in a matter of decades.

In 1789, a replica of the tilma was made, using the best techniques of the time. From the beginning this replica was displayed behind glass. But it was discarded after only 8 years because it was faded, and the threads were breaking.

On the other hand, the original tilma--by then over 250 years old--had been displayed for over 100 years with no protection at all, exposed to hundereds of burning votive candles in the immediate vicinity, as well as the humid air, and even to the pius touch and kisses of pilgrims.

Aside from simply not falling appart, the tilma has survied several potential catastrophes. In 1785 a clumsy worker, while cleaning the glass in front of the image, spilled a 50% nitric acid solution on it. The image, however, was unharmed.

In 1921 a bomb (with 29 sticks of dynamite) was placed in a flower arrangement on the altar at the foot of the image. When the bomb went off all the windows in the basilica were shattered (though some were 150 meters from the explosion), marble throughout the chruch was damaged, and a massive brass cross on the altar was severely mangled (the deformed crucifix can still be seen). The fragile image, sitting behind ordinary glass (bullet-proof glass was installed only in 1993) was untouched.

But what about the image? Is it a fraud?

More than once scientists have concluded that the image itself is inexplicable.

Already in the 18th century examiners had concluded that the work could not have been human.

In 1936, Nobel Prize winning chemist Richard Kuhn examined two colored fibers from the tilma. He found that there were no natural or mineral pigment in the fibers.

In 1979 Phillip Callahan examined the image using an infrared camera and concluded that the image was inexplicable as a human work.

Moreover, in the late 70's microscopic work on the eyes of the image showed that a scene (apparenlty consistent with the accounts of Juan Diego's displaying the roses to the Bishop) appear in the pupils of the image.

That there was an image in the right eye was first noticed in 1929. In 1951, Jose Carlos Salinas Chavez, noticed that it was also visible in the left. In 1956, the ophthalmologist Javier Torroella Bueno certified that the images displayed the distortions and effects seen in human eyes. During that year similar observations were made by Rafael Torrija Lavoignet, also an ophthalmologist. The most well-known work on the eyes was done by Jose Aste Tonsmann, who while at IBM carried out analysis of extremely high resolution images of the eyes, starting in 1979, and resulting in a book on the topic.

One would be tempted to dismiss these extremely faint images as an example of an ink-blot test, except that the images from the two eyes do seem to match (aside from differences in perspective consistent with the optics of human vision).

Various other attempts have been made to show that the image is unable to be explained as a fraud, but I leave those to the reader to examine. It seems that what has been so far advanced should be sufficient.

One could, likewise, describe the various healings that have been associated with the image. But again it seems unnecessary.

Thus ends the first installment.

Some interesting links:

• SCIENCE AND GUADALUPE VIRGIN by Ana Hernandez (unfortunately the original is a .doc).


• Our Lady of Guadalupe ‘completely beyond' scientific explanation


• The story


• Short overview of some scientific analysis

Scary new phishing attack

I love reading about exploits. I just ran across this new method of phishing, dubbed tabnapping.

Basically, the idea is that people identify their tabs by the favicon and title.

So you go to some website; it displays some legitimate content. Then you go to another tab, for some reason. Once you have been off the malicious tab for some period of time, it sneakily changes its favicon and title to match a secure-website that you use, and changes its contents to mirror that site.

So imagine you are Joe-user, with 15 tabs open. You follow a link from a google search. You leave it open in the background while you go and check your rss reader. Then you go to check your email, you scan your tabs looking for the little gmail envelope and go to that tab. When you bring it up it shows the login page, "huh, you think. I wonder why I'm not logged in", and enter your credentials. Little do you know you actually just sent your username and password to the malicious site, not google.

Don't TV writers take grammar?

As tonight's news came on, the anchor describes some unfortunate set of incident, then says,

Stay tuned for the details on whom may be responsible.

At least they are trying.

But just as a helpful note: 'who''s case does not come from following 'on'.

Here is a simple rule that everyone should remember always:

A relative pronoun takes its case from the role it plays in its own clause.

In the given example, 'who' is the subject of 'may be', thus it is nominative.

Just needed to get that out there.

When Words Collide

The donkey has long been an image of slowness and dim-wittedness. Thus Michelangelo puts donkey ears on his critic Cesena, in the Last Judgment.

Indeed 'asinus' (the adjective, whence E. 'asinine') in Latin, could be used to mean not only donkeylike, but also stupid.

Or Euclid's pons asinorum: "The bridge of the asses," the proposition at which one moved into non-trivial proofs, and thus where the dunces would start to struggle.

Thus the original English word 'ass' (and later the masculine 'jackass'), from the Latin 'asinus', just referred to the animal: When used as an insult it was literally calling a person a donkey, with the implication of stupidity and dullness.

Meanwhile we have the Germanic 'arse' meaning the buttocks. Sometime near the beginning of modern English, it seems the 'r' dropped out, and 'arse' became 'ass'.

Etymonline gives us the history:

first attested 1860 in nautical slang, in popular use from 1930; chiefly U.S.; from dial. variant pronunciation of arse (q.v.). The loss of -r- before -s- attested in several other words (e.g. burst/bust, curse/cuss, horse/hoss, barse/bass). Indirect evidence of the change from arse to ass can be traced to 1785 (in euphemistic avoidance of ass "donkey" by polite speakers) and perhaps to Shakespeare, if Nick Bottom transformed into a donkey in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1594) is the word-play some think it is.

At this point confusion ensues. As noted, already in the 18th century polite company avoided 'ass' even when used with its older meaning.

In contemporary American usage, when one calls another an ass, it seems from my observation at least, that the intended significance is to identify the subject as a bottom. In fact, calling someone a donkey is sometimes used as a euphemistic play on words to call someone a butt, without the speaker realizing that he is in fact paraphrasing the original insult (so it is actually a very direct insult, according to the old use and neither a euphemism nor a play on words).

Thus the insult has remained largely unchanged, but its reference and signification has entirely changed. It's sort of like the invasion of the body snatcher. Only with words.

An Admonition to Priests

Some Sarum Missals, used in England from the XIIIth cent. until the Reformation, offer priests this sobering and salutary thought:

Presbyter in Christi mensa quid agis bene pensa: aut tibi vita datur aut mors aeterna paratur.

Translation:

Think carefully, Priest, of what you do on Christ's table: Either life is given you or eternal death is prepared.

We can also put it in verse to match the Latin:

Think you Priest with trepidation

What you do at the Consecration

For given you is Life Eternal

Or made for you is death infernal.

Taken from this fascinating, detailed description of the Use of Sarum, courtesy of the AngloCatholic.

The SSPX and the Magisterium

Rorate has an interview with Bp. Fellay.

In reading it one Q and A stuck out to me:

Brian Mershon: Some critics say that the Society’s rejection of a canonical or practical solution is a sign of obstinacy or ill will. How do you answer that? (Emphasis mine.)

Bishop Fellay: It is very simple. The Holy See has agreed that the doctrinal talks should happen, so that should answer the questions without putting the burden on me. Besides that, it is very clear that whatever practical solution that would happen without a sound doctrinal foundation would lead directly to disaster. We don’t want that. We want and need the security of a sound solution on the level of doctrine to go ahead. So to pretend there is something definitive prior to engaging in the doctrinal talks…

We have all these previous examples in front of us—the Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King and all of the others are totally blocked on the level of doctrine because they first accepted the practical agreement.

The question is one I have long wanted an answer to. Unfortunately I found the answer somewhat wanting.

First, that the Holy Father wants the talks doesn't really mean that the SSPX is in a good situation. To me, this more indicates that HH doesn't fully trust them, or has some reason to think that they have substantial doctrinal issues that need to be addressed. In other words, the argument base on the need for a solid doctrinal agreement is a good one coming from HH concerning someone whose orthodoxy is in question, but not coming from a Catholic.

Second, the whole second part of his answer speaking of a "sound solution on the level of doctrine" and of others' being "totally blocked because they first accepted the practical solution" smacks of an attitude foreign to the Catholic.

"Solution" to what? "Blocked" from what? Correcting the Magisterium?

It seems to be that a Catholic before the Magisterium has only one acceptable posture: acceptance of all that is definitively taught, and careful, respectful study of all that is taught non-definitively. A Catholic does not address the Magesterium as an equal, at least not on matters of doctrine.

It is something of an either-or. At the end of the day one either accepts and submits the Magisterium, insofar as every Catholic is required, or one rejects it. The fact that dogmatic or doctrinal talks are being put before a full reintegration of the SSPX with the Universal Church only indicates to me that the SSPX and the Holy See think that they have substantial doctrinal differences, which seems to imply that the SSPX is not ready to fully submit to the teaching authority of the Church.

The second part of this reply sounded to me like, "We don't like what the Church is teaching, and we aren't going to come back unless they satisfy us first."

Now admittedly theology is always subtle, we don't know exactly what is being said behind those doors, and things only get more complex when the care of souls is a primary concern (so perhaps the SSPX thinks that some things have been put forth in a confusing way that might cause scandal and thus are willing to postpone full union until these issues are settled). That the content of the talks is secret only more obscures the issue. So maybe I am totally off base, but Fellay's reply to this question did not inspire much confidence, at least not in me.