Misplaced Mediaeval: 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: