Pope Francis and a Eucharistic Miracle

[notsheigetz]

Just read a fascinating article on Pope Francis.

I would describe my current state of religiosity as someone who has gone from being a fervent Christian in my early years to very much of a doubting Thomas in my latter ones. I have never been Catholic and always thought the teaching of the "real presence" in the Catholic communion to be hokum of the purest sort that could be easily disproved with DNA testing. Well, according to the article linked below there has been some movement on this front and Pope Francis is in the center of it, having presided over a claimed Eucharistic miracle in Brazil in 1996. The real kicker in this story was the following statement....

"What is extraordinary about this fact is that the DNA is the exact same match as another Eucharist 'miracle' that took place in the 8th century in Lanciano, Italy confirming that both samples came from the same person."


I searched in vain to find anything on the internet backing up the claim in that sentence so make of it what you will.
The link....

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/ ... ancis.html

[dualstow]

Hmm, now I'm back to being curious about your screen name.

Well, I like Pope Francis very much and I wouldn't kick him out of my house for eating crackers, but I am of course skeptical.
Here is some interesting commentary from the guy at the Skepdic (Skeptic's Dictionary) on the original so-called miracle:

http://www.skepdic.com/news/newsletter88.html#7

[notsheigetz]

Hmm, now I'm back to being curious about your screen name.

I was using a different screen name when I first joined the site but I changed it for a combination of two reasons. The first was that it was too close to my real name which I decided was unwise and the other was because somebody perceived a post I made to be antisemitic.

Sheigetz
Yiddish A non-Jewish man, especially one perceived to be anti-Semitic.

So that's where my screen name came from. I truly am non-Jewish, but not antisemitic. Mystery solved.

And as for the other mystery I now have it on good authority from another Catholic (my wife) that the Catholic church uses stories of Eucharistic miracles to over-awe the people and keep them under control (not exactly the way she put it but close enough). Why she still considers herself to be Catholic if that's what she believes is another unsolved mystery.

[Ad Orientem]

Miracles are by their very nature a believe it or not kinda thing. Those predisposed against belief will never lack for reasons to disbelieve. And those who are predisposed to belief will sometimes accept too quickly things which aught not to be taken without question. Faith should be reasoned according to St. Paul, not blind. But in the end one cannot prove the existence of God, unless He were disposed to some demonstration which we probably would not want to be on the receiving end of.

Being Orthodox our Eucharistic theology is similar to that of the Romans but we don't get into the whole adoration thing nor are so called Eucharistic miracles a part of our tradition. That seems to be a Western thing.

[murphy_p_t]

Miracles are by their very nature a believe it or not kinda thing.

I thikn it depends on the nature of the miracle. For instance, the miracle of the sun, at Fatima, Portugal in the early 20th century was documented by the secular press. The secular press confirmed the nature of the beyond-nature action of the sun. I don't think a physical phenomenon documented by secular, even hostile authorities requires faith or belief.

[murphy_p_t]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_advocate

I thought this entry on the origin of the "Devil's Advocate" to be interesting. Basically suggesting that the Church is not so quick to accept pious beliefs as some might suppose.

[dualstow]

for murphy: I found something on Fatima, but it doesn't mention the sun, just an image of the Virgin Mary. But, early 20th cent., Fatima, Portugal? Must be the same event.  http://www.skepdic.com/refuge/funk13.html#fatima
I don't know what today's astronomers would say about "documenting nature as beyond-nature", but my guess is that they'd say the 1917'ers did not fully understand it.

I remember when some unfamiliar students asked me to join their bible study at Boston University. A friendly girl wanted to talk about Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, and quickly added that there are astronomical records which confirm that something odd happened. I asked her if it was possible that something odd happened, and then they wrote the Joshua story around it. Well yes, she said, that would be one way of looking at it. I didn't make it to bible study.

notsheigetz: I am familiar with the word, but since it literally means blemish and is a derogatory word for non-Jews (as is the female equivalent, 'shiksa'), I assumed all this time that you were not an antisemite but rather a (to some degree) prejudiced Jew, lol.

[RuralEngineer]

I've always found it suspicious that miracles tend to happen to those predisposed to believe in their existence.  It seems like this would be a great recruiting tool, and was in fact used to great effect (if the New Testament is to be believed) previously.  I'm very curious why more unbelievers aren't being exposed to these miracles in an attempt to convert them.  I've heard various attempts at hand waving this away, usually saying something about needing to have faith and the difference between believing and knowing, and I'd be receptive to that were it not contradicted by the biblical use of miracles.

[dualstow]

I've always found it suspicious that miracles tend to happen to those predisposed to believe in their existence.

Those predisposed against belief will never lack for reasons to disbelieve.

I don't think skeptics are necessarily predisposed against belief, although maybe some are. Perhaps you could think of the physical laws of the universe being like the pp. It's a shaky analogy at best, but when someone comes along touting options or a leveraged version of the pp, it usually sounds too good to be true. If someone comes a long with a financial "miracle" of a strategy that is superior to the pp, I think many of us will analyze it rather than brush it aside without thinking.

When my pious Catholic friend in college went to Medjugorje (in former Yugoslavia) and came back insisting that rosaries brought there had turned to gold, I found it hard to believe. Occam's razor said that it was more likely that instead of wood or other substances being transformed into metal, my friend had been tricked. Or he was susceptible to the widespread suggestion that rosaries turned to gold all the time in Medjugorje. And you know what? I was envious of him at the time, because it gave him a profound sense of meaning. This is an intelligent guy, now in the medical profession and doing very well for himself. He just happened to be raised, "formatted" as my wife would say, to believe in a benevolent Father in the sky, from birth. He's now an atheist although I'm not exactly sure when that happened.

[notsheigetz]

I remember when some unfamiliar students asked me to join their bible study at Boston University. A friendly girl wanted to talk about Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, and quickly added that there are astronomical records which confirm that something odd happened. I asked her if it was possible that something odd happened, and then they wrote the Joshua story around it. Well yes, she said, that would be one way of looking at it. I didn't make it to bible study.

The story about the astronomical confirmation of the Joshua story by computers at NASA has been around for a long time. The person who started it did work for NASA but finally had to admit that it never happened.

To the extent I still believe, I quit taking things like this in the Bible literally a long time ago.

Have you ever watched any of the "Bible Mysteries Explained" series on the Discovery Channel? Some of them are pretty neat. I particularly liked the one about Exodus where they showed how the 10 plagues inflicted on Egypt could have actually happened as the result of a famine, including the slaying of the first born of man and beast which was really mind-blowing.

And then there was the explanation of the "pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day" that led the Israelites to the promised land. It never occurred to me that this is a perfect description of an active volcano. 

[dualstow]

...
To the extent I still believe, I quit taking things like this in the Bible literally a long time ago.

Have you ever watched any of the "Bible Mysteries Explained" series on the Discovery Channel?
...
And then there was the explanation of the "pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day" that led the Israelites to the promised land. It never occurred to me that this is a perfect description of an active volcano.

I absolutely love stuff like this. When I was a kid, there was an Israeli scientist on tv trying to explain, and replicate w/ a small model, a natural phenomenon that could have approximated the parting of the Red Sea. It was fascinating.

There is an article that was reproduced in one of those annual Best American Science Writing anthologies asserting that the Jews made up most of their history. Not just the slavery in Egypt, but plenty of other events that haven't been documented by reputable alternate sources. As a person of Hebrew extraction, I found this somewhat deflating at first, then amusing, and now just plain interesting.

[Pointedstick]

The theory that the garden of eden story described an ancient people's reaction to become an agricultural civilization totally blew my mind.

[MediumTex]

The theory that the garden of eden story described an ancient people's reaction to become an agricultural civilization totally blew my mind.

You've read Ishmael, right?

[Pointedstick]

A long time ago, but I've forgotten most of it. I ought to read it again sometime.

[MediumTex]

The subject of religion often makes me sad.

I grew up in the Baptist church and I really appreciate all of the good things that religious organizations in the world do (and I don't appreciate the bad things that they do), but once that belief structure begins to fall apart, it's hard to put it back together again.

My adult experience with religion bears striking similarities to my childhood experience with Santa Claus.

Part of what I think really messed up religion for me is I dug into it way too deeply.  Many people are content to just go to church and casually accept a bunch of ideas that don't really make any sense, but which make them feel better.  I never found that satisfying and assumed that if I dug more deeply I would find satisfaction, but what my digging revealed was more like a pile of presents under a blanket in the back of my parents' closet, which was upsetting, in part, because when something like that happens you don't necessarily have anyone you can even talk to about it (you can't talk to your parents, who are the authority figures in your life, and you can't talk to your friends, because you don't want to mess up the experience for them as well).

Part of me wants to go back to my Santa Claus understanding of God.  Life was in some ways simpler back then.  Part of me, though, is happy to see things more as they really are (based only on my understanding of things, of course).

I always tell my kids that when you stop believing in Santa Clause he stops coming, which is IMHO sound advice.  Maybe one day I will tell them the same thing about God.

A religious person might look at me and say "You see, that's a great reason to remain strong in your faith.  Look how much more confusing things can be without the psychological framework that religion provides."  Maybe they would be right.  I don't know.

As my views have evolved, one thing that has been really surprising (and which is part of the reason I use the presents-in-the-parents'-closet analogy) is how few people I find who I can really talk to about these things.  The problem I run into is almost everyone approaches this topic from a position that they feel they must defend, while others simply don't care about it enough to really give it much thought in the first place.  The people I would like to find and talk to are those who are as deeply and sincerely curious as I am, but who simply won't go along with the lazy reasoning that many people use to explain, justify or validate their beliefs.

For example, if someone told me that they worshiped a stick and that I should worship the stick as well, I would need something more from them than a book on stick worship written by a group of stick worshipers from 2,000 years ago who made their living by contributions from people they converted to stick worshiping.

The problem, too, that bothers me is that it's hard to be really devout in any particular religion without feeling like people in other religions are basically wrong in their beliefs, and thus just as lost of non-believers.  This perspective only takes a little bad luck to make the idea of violence against non-believers seem like a good idea.

Oh well, no offense intended to any of my religious friends here.  Just sharing my perspective.

[Pointedstick]

I share your views, MT, although I arrived at it from a different place.

I was raised by half-heartedly religious people who were really atheists but thought it was a good idea to expose their kids to religion, or  and always saw it as a bit of a sham for dim people. But as I got older, I realized that the community that religion brings to your life can be incredibly rewarding, and I observed that my religious friends have usually been happier than my atheist friends.

So I investigated it and tried to become religious. I really tried. But in the end, I couldn't get over the sloppy reasoning and thin logic. Now obviously this is the wrong perspective; logic doesn't come into it--you need to have faith. And faith is something we all have, if not in a god, then in principles such as "everything will turn out well in the end" or "people are fundamentally altruistic/selfish".

But for some reason, I just can't manage to dig up any faith in a religious principle. Perhaps the problem is that I've managed to change my own beliefs by challenging things I had faith in in the past. Since I don't exempt religious faith from this kind of critical examination, it's led to me concluding that it's a shared social bond that ties communities together that you have to believe is more than that for it to keep its power.

It's kind of sad. I wish I could be religious for all the benefits, but just haven't figured out a way to. So I find myself enviously looking at churches, knowing I can never experience the deep meaning found by the people within.

[MediumTex]

Great post, MT.

I am curious about something...

I always tell my kids that when you stop believing in Santa Clause he stops coming, which is IMHO sound advice.  Maybe one day I will tell them the same thing about God.

Do you take your kids to church? (and how old are they?)

Yes.  5, 9 and 13.  (Sorry if that makes me look like a hypocrite.)

We also celebrate Christmas and Santa Claus comes.

[dualstow]

I loved reading 'Ishmael', which I learned about from you all here at this forum, although I tend to see the fall of Eve / eating from the tree of wisdom as more of a positive thing than that which is described in Ishmael: something like becoming an adult. With knowledge and wisdom comes responsibility. Either one can live like a child or a cat that stares at the wall all day, or one can bear the burden of worldly knowledge while enjoying the good aspects of free will.

Of course, this applies to both believers and atheists. Believers may derive more comfort from a meaninful, orderly universe which I still sometimes envy. Like PS said, you can't really force yourself back into it. It would be impossible, like forcing oneself to enjoy the taste of cilantro. You either do or you don't. Well, ok, cilantro cookies are good. But, we all have to make our way through life, believers or not.

I grew up with half-hearted religious parents like you, PS. They are not atheists, but they may as well have been, as they just went through the motions of religion. It's almost like they inoculated me against true belief Pasteur style with this "weakened belief".  How could I take it seriously? If they had been fervent atheists, maybe I would have been curious about some forbidden religion.

I always use the Santa Claus metaphor with my fallen Christian friends.

For example, if someone told me that they worshiped a stick and that I should worship the stick as well, I would need something more from them than a book on stick worship written by a group of stick worshipers from 2,000 years ago who made their living by contributions from people they converted to stick worshiping.

This is the main counter-argument to Pascal's Wager in a nutshell. ADDED: There are just too many sticks and stones out there to choose the one that won't hurt you, i.e. that won't send you to Damnation.

[Pointedstick]

I grew up with half-hearted religious parents like you, PS. They are not atheists, but they may as well have been, as they just went through the motions of religion. It's almost like they inoculated me against true belief Pasteur style with this "weakened belief".  How could I take it seriously? If they had been fervent atheists, maybe I would have been curious about some forbidden religion.

Exactly!

Neither my wife nor I are religious (not atheists though, more agnostics) and we don't intend on raising our son with the half-hearted "religion inoculation" you and I got, so sometimes I wonder if this means he'll become religious. It'll probably be good for him.

[MediumTex]

It's kind of sad. I wish I could be religious for all the benefits, but just haven't figured out a way to. So I find myself enviously looking at churches, knowing I can never experience the deep meaning found by the people within.

Yep.

The community of people you can more or less trust and sometimes rely on is nice to have.

One interesting thing that has happened to me on my journey is, ironically, that I feel more like a Christian today than I ever have before.

Here's why:

I find the message of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament to be basically true, and that message is:

1. Be kind, generous and forgiving toward others.

2. Cultivate love in your heart and learn to feel it toward others.

3. Be skeptical of the ability of worldly things to generate lasting contentment.

4. Be skeptical of all forms of institutional authority.  The authority that should get moral respect is one that isn't petty and self-serving (as most all institutional authority is).

I find that message to be true, refreshing and uplifting.  (I realize that Jesus wasn't the first to say these things, and I have no idea if a person named Jesus ever actually said them, either, but I have these Bibles with the words in them, and I like the message a lot.)  IMHO, it isn't necessary to validate this message by having him rise from the dead after being murdered by the government, visit a bunch of people in ghostly form and then fly into the heavens with a promise of an eventual return to rule the earth.  I think that the message stands on its own without any supernatural accoutrement.

It's sort of hard to explain that to people, though.  Ironically, my experience is that people often don't actually think too deeply about the lessons from Jesus's life in the way that they live their own lives.  People often seem to react to religion with the approach of "What's the minimum that I have to do to get the favorable treatment for eternity?"

What's really ironic to me is the number of Jews today who don't really take their own religion very seriously, considering that the Jewish God is the one who has spilled over into most other monotheistic world religions--i.e., it is odd to see religions that basically borrowed the Jewish God behaving much more reverently toward that God than the people from whom they borrowed it.  I don't mean to say that Jews today don't take their Jewishness very seriously, I have just had many religious discussions with Jewish friends where it seemed that the role of religion in their lives was pretty small, which is not what one would expect from "God's People."

[Pointedstick]

What's really ironic to me is the number of Jews today who don't really take their own religion very seriously, considering that the Jewish God is the one who has spilled over into most other monotheistic world religions--i.e., it is odd to see religions that basically borrowed the Jewish God behaving much more reverently toward that God than the people from whom they borrowed it.  I don't mean to say that Jews today don't take their Jewishness very seriously, I have just had many religious discussions with Jewish friends where it seemed that the role of religion in their lives was pretty small, which is not what one would expect from "God's People."

I'm Jewish--culturally, at least--and you're absolutely right. I went on a Birthright trip a few years ago and found myself just shocked by my peers. Even though I was ultimately unsuccessful, I was there to try to learn how to be religious. With a very small number of exceptions, my peers were there to have a big free vacation, break the rules against alcohol consumption, have a lot of drunk sex, and finally get brainwashed into wanting to fight Arabs for the state of Israel.

[MediumTex]

Great post, MT.

I am curious about something...
Do you take your kids to church? (and how old are they?)

Yes.  5, 9 and 13.  (Sorry if that makes me look like a hypocrite.)

I think we all live with numerous contradictions, so I don't think it is hypocritical to do something that you think will benefit your kids.  And I certainly see beneficial aspects to churches.

It also depends on what part of the country/world you live in.

It doesn't bother me to see people simply sticking with the faith they were brought up in even after they have personally seen through it in a way that precludes "true belief."  I sort of enjoy looking around church and wondering who these people are.

The really sad case is the one where the pastor/priest realizes the true nature of his church's belief system, and yet chooses to remain inside the religious organization teaching things he no longer believes himself, partly because at that point his investment in the belief system is too great to walk away from it, whether it's true or not.

I kind of feel like the new Pope is one of those people, and part of what he is doing now is trying to let the world know that there are many aspects of Catholicism that can make the world a better place without embracing dogmatic beliefs.  We'll see how far he gets with that.

One of the tensions in the Bible that people really ought to be more honest about is the vengeful, homophobic, nationalistic, cruel God of the Old Testament with the open, loving and forgiving God of the New Testament.  If you look at it with fresh eyes, the two deities don't resemble one another much at all.  It's like two sets of parents, one of which believes in spanking, scolding, and various other forms of psychological abuse, and the other of which believes in a kind, generous, gentle and open approach to parenting.

To cite one puzzling book from the Bible, has anyone ever read Job?  Did it remind you a little of Trading Places (sans the scene with Jamie Lee Curtis)?  Where Job really lost me was when God started killing Job's kids.  I kept thinking that surely God had better things to do than completely wreck this whole man's life and kill his family just to test his devotion.  That seemed a little over the top to me. 

Imagine Job's testimony in front of a modern church where he talked about God wrecking his house, giving him a terrible skin disease and killing his family and then talking about how great this same deity was.  If I were the pastor I would make sure to take the collection before that dude got up and spoke.  Talk about a downer.

[MediumTex]

I'm Jewish--culturally, at least--and you're absolutely right. I went on a Birthright trip a few years ago and found myself just shocked by my peers. Even though I was ultimately unsuccessful, I was there to try to learn how to be religious. With a very small number of exceptions, my peers were there to have a big free vacation, break the rules against alcohol consumption, have a lot of drunk sex, and finally get brainwashed into wanting to fight Arabs for the state of Israel.

Was it sort of like a Mormon mission trip, minus the bicycles and belief?

I have also always wondered why no one seemed to notice that there was no Heaven and Hell in the Old Testament, and really not much of a devil either.  For example, the serpent in the Garden of Eden was, strictly speaking, just a mischievous talking serpent.  It never said he was Satan.  If the reader was supposed to interpret the serpent as Satan, why wouldn't the writer have just said "The serpent, who was Satan in snake form...", but of course the writer wouldn't have said that because there was no concept of Satan as a fallen angel, lord of the underworld, etc. in the Old Testament.  That came later. 

In the Old Testament, evil didn't have a mascot.

[notsheigetz]

I was raised by parents who didn't go to church but sent me to the local Quaker church to get some religion so I wouldn't "grow up to be a heathen" as my mother put it (she was raised Catholic but was excommunicated for marrying my father).

I was not religious at all growing up and the only time I remember really wanting to go to church of my own free will was the Sunday after Kennedy was assassinated.

I returned from Vietnam addicted to drugs and one day I was sitting in a bar with some friends in South Carolina while high on a double hit of LSD, along with several other things smoked during a day-long binge. I remember the band started playing a song that was popular at the time and the chorus went "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, who are you what have you sacrificed". Tears starting streaming down my eyes. I was immediately in my right mind and I never did drugs again.

I once thought I was going to be a preacher but I'm now glad I didn't go down that path.

I would still describe myself as a Christian believer but not of the fundamentalist sort, though I once had more of that in me that I like to admit. I haven't been to church in many years.

The bottom line for me is that I still find the narrative of Christianity as recorded in the New Testament compelling ("That which our eyes have seen, our hands have handled, concerning the word of life - quote John). Something extraordinary must have happened to give birth to a religion that has lasted for more than 2000 years. I think you either believe the testimony or you don't and that's the whole point.

I think there is even inspiration in the Old Testament but I think in the case of both the Old and New it is a combination of both man and God - just like Jesus.

[dualstow]

I like the Jesus list, MT. In fact, I was into Jesus while in college, but my Christian roommate looked at me and my big nose and said, "But...you're Jewish!"
Just as Wolverine is a counterculture anti-hero who was born out of the Vietnam War, or at least inspired by it, Jesus was the counterculture hero of his time. I don't know or care what really happened back then. I love the guy and the principles he stands for. {And obviously, he's much more important than a silly comic book character. I'm not even a comic book fan}.

What's really ironic to me is the number of Jews today who don't really take their own religion very seriously, considering that the Jewish God is the one who has spilled over into most other monotheistic world religions

I wasn't aware of the drunken sex that PS mentioned -- where can I sign up for that? -- but then again, I've never heard of a birthright visit.
Here's my take on it. If Elie Wiesel is a pp lurker, well, read no further, Elie. This is just going to upset you:

1) Buddhism's birthplace is India, but it's the east Asians who really cultivated it while India has not.
2) I disagree with Bill Bruford that ageing rock musicians should graduate to jazz at a certain point in their careers. However, I think it makes sense that the Greeks eventually accepted that their myths were just myths. They grew out of it. For whatever reason, perhaps the Holocaust -- a Jobian experience of massive proportions -- this whole secular thing got started. And now, most of the Jews I look up to are secular.

Once upon a time, the smartest Jews in the village became rabbis, and rabbis were encouraged to have lots of children, breeding more smart Jews, or so the story goes. But, the age of wise Talmudic scholars is over. Smart Jews are now into physics, dentistry, and directing The Empire Strikes Back.

So, we have Jewish kids growing up with barely religious parents and we have a large pool of secular idols from which to draw inspiration: novelists & Hollywood writers, comedians and actors, fashion designers, scientists and chessmasters. What about religious Jews?

There are plenty of great rabbis out there, and I've met some of them, but I don't tend to get along with the pious Jews I know. Some of them are downright nutty. And the ones I don't know are building illegal settlements and generally doing things to Palestinians that make the rest of us look bad.

Christians have no shortage of Jerry Swaggarts and hypocrites, but they also have a wellspring of down-to-earth members, and Christians who are great thinkers. Maybe my thinking is totally inaccurate but my perception is that the wise Jews get out of the religion business early on. Jesus is of course an exception because religion is what there was back then. 'Know your meme" hadn't been invented yet. I'm only speaking of modern Jews and Christians.

I kept thinking that surely God had better things to do than completely wreck this whole man's life and kill his family just to test his devotion.

Little known fact: The Lord actually used Todd for that job.