1968 ... must be real

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Yes, Our Lady of Zeitoun is “real”, having been approved by both the Coptic Orthodox Pope and the local Roman Catholic Bishop. Also accepted as real by the government of Egypt.
 
I didn’t believe in God until I saw this. A 15 square mile radius was checked. No technology in 1968 was capable of doing this – spontaneous remission of cancer, polio, all documented. There is no scientific explanation for this. It must be real.

So, science can prove religion. It raises questions though.

For all intents and purposes the Coptic and Roman Catholic Churches are identical in their beliefs. I have not heard of another religion experiencing something like this in modern day history.

It has been documented by reputable sources that Padre Pio could bilocate and read minds, that Cupertino could levitate but could not control it. Religious ecstacy.

But, why do we only see Virgin Mary Apparitions and 0 Jesus Christ. I wish she would heal me.

As a scientist, this is very compelling that Catholicism is the true religion and that the rest is bull.

I went to Catholic school but they turned us into atheists because you learn a lot more in CS than you do in Church. This is very compelling and I don’t know why it did not get more publicity at the time.

Spontaneous remission of cancer documented by Muslim doctors. She was healing Muslims. They converted faster than you can say Holy Mother of God.

The takeaway I got from Catholic School was more that Jesus was trying to change the world into a kinder place. His death served no purpose. We couldn’t get it. Most of us rejected the Old Testament because it depicted a God who was not very nice.

But at that age we question. People ask me – did Jesus sin. Yes, he cursed a fig tree out of spite. He would have known it had no fruit from a distance. They tried to retrofit a symbolic meaning to it but it never washed.

I think the great thing about CS was we could openly challenge these inconsistencies.
You can’t do that in other religions. Plus, we’re not bible thumpers.

These offshoots of RC sometimes amaze me. A woman whose husband was a navy seal was killed and she made some statement about his love of Jesus. Lady, he was part of an offensive attack force and killed people. You think he went to heaven?

We had some interesting dialog in Catholic School that would shock many here.

Also wanted to add that one or two Eucharistic miracles showed matter transformation actually happening … into heart tissue.
 
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Miracles happen at Lourdes. Miracles happen every day.
I have had cancer and heart failure and have no evidence of either disease. I have complex regional pain syndrome(a very rare very painful condition of the nervous system). Doctors in a small city were able to catch and treat this disease ealy so that I am almost always painfree and the pain I have can be treated with ibuprofen…
These all happened within the last 10 years.
It depends on how you look at things too. All good gifts come from God, in my opinion.
 
But, why do we only see Virgin Mary Apparitions and 0 Jesus Christ.
There are a significant number of Christ apparitions. The Church is very careful about officially approving a Christ apparition though. As we are not permitted to discuss unapproved apparitions on the forum, I am limited in what I can post here. Christ has appeared to a goodly number of saints and what usually happens is that the saint is canonized, but the Church doesn’t really take a position on the apparition of Christ; nevertheless, based on the canonization, the Church presumably accepts the Christ apparition at least for devotional purposes.

The biggest more-or-less-approved ones I can think of right now are the Divine Mercy apparitions to St. Faustina, resulting in the Divine Mercy devotion, and the Sacred Heart apparitions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, resulting in the Nine First Fridays devotion. Both St. Faustina and St. Margaret Mary were canonized, and the devotions have been approved and widely promulgated by the Vatican.

Servant of God Rhoda Wise who is currently up for canonization allegedly had numerous visits from Christ and St. Therese. I don’t think she reported seeing the Blessed Mother.
 
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People ask me – did Jesus sin. Yes, he cursed a fig tree out of spite. He would have known it had no fruit from a distance. They tried to retrofit a symbolic meaning to it but it never washed.
Jesus didn’t sin. Jesus NEVER sinned, and everything Jesus did in his public life had some teaching purpose for us.
The cursing of the fig tree was an allegorical reference to the evil of the Pharisees.
The word for “Fig” was apparently a colloquial term for a very good admirable Jewish person.
Just like the word for “Pig” was a colloquial term for the lowest of the low, such as a Gentile person.
A lot was lost in translation over the centuries.
This was explained in great detail in a homily by a learned priest I happened to hear.
 
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Lourdes I’m aware of, but even the Pope said he didn’t understand how God could permit childhood cancer. That spoke volumes. No child deserves to suffer…

We would stump the teachers so many times they would get embarrassed and turn red. I didn’t, but others did. Catholic School basically told us that evolution was true – I kid you not. They taught both and said you decide and were throwing hints.

This is why they avoided the Old Testament almost completely later on. It became radioactive. Every time they went in there, we would get confused and say, “wait a minute, God drowned babies! in Noah’s arc”. That’s wrong! Period. No if’s and’s or but’s. What could they say?

Teacher said, “oh, well God thought they would grow up to be like their parents”.

“Well how could they if the parents are drowned?”. You see – you can’t say that in church but critical thinking mode was on in school. This kid said that. She was disgusted.

Another one kept hammering over Adam and Eve vs. evolution. The teacher would say, “you can believe both”. She finally said, “if I tell you I’ll lose my job”. I turned to the guy and said, ‘quit it, your mother was a chimp – get used to it’.

One of the priests was gay and was spotted leaving a gay bar with really TIGHT leather pants on. We kept that a secret.

Another was a stand up comic. One time my aunt went to him and said, “I fell and broke my arm when I was going out of my way to come to Church while the sidewalks were icy. Why would he let that happen. Why would St. Roch let that happen?”

The priest says, “Maybe he didn’t want you to come and your line was busy. I told you to get call waiting”.

He had us rolling on the floor in laughter. What a nice man.
 
I recall one that turned out to be fungal – it looked like a host was turning into blood. The RC Church is very scientific, especially from an astronomical perspective.
 
We would stump the teachers so many times they would get embarrassed and turn red. I didn’t, but others did. Catholic School basically told us that evolution was true – I kid you not. They taught both and said you decide and were throwing hints.
Look, I grew up in the 60s and 70s too and yes, Catholic school teachers, other than some of the older Sisters, often were not the sharpest knives in the drawer when it came to catechesis. They were working for cheap and often poorly trained, and the curriculum was a bunch of hippie Jesus-is-your-brother love gunk. I learned most of my Catholic teaching from my mother and a little bit from books and older Sisters, priests etc.

However, you’re no longer a school child. You are an adult and fully capable of reading all kinds of resources - many of which are now even at your fingertips for free via the Internet - and sorting out all faith questions. It is pointless for you to sit around ruminating on the shortcomings of your teachers.

Also, our faith is not built on miracles. God provides them to help faith to grow, but they are a rare thing. You should build your faith on rock by learning via Scripture and tradition, and developing a relationship with God through daily worship and prayer.
Sitting around thinking about whether a bleeding host miracle is scientific is to me missing hte point. Yes, I believe that bleeding host miracles sometimes happen, I think they’re great.
But they are not the basis of my faith and it would also be perfectly fine if someone else didn’t believe in the bleeding host miracle (for example, said “It’s fungus” or “It’s hysteria”), as long as they believed in the Real Presence of Jesus in the host.

What exactly are you getting at with all this rambling anyway? I am confused as to what point you are trying to make on this thread.
 
Yeah, @CatholicRules,what are you trying to accomplish? If you’re looking to build faith in yourself or others, stop bashing your old school and the Church.
 
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I get it, but in the context in which it was written, others did not.

Then there was that violent table turning incident.

We were taught that he did sin from time to time – I mean when he was 12 he took off and his parents went nuts trying to find him and when they did, he “blew them off” saying that they should have known where he’d be. That’s disrespecting your parents, right?

A lot was lost … the word hell for instance. The redemptive power of forgiveness – that was the core theme we got. Yet, people keeping doing the same crap.

I think one point of contention was that he kept saying you must believe, you must believe that I am who I say I am. As children, we thought simplistically. You don’t have to tell us that.

All he had to do was perform one miracle in front of Pilate, and that would have been the end of that. Everyone in power would be peeling potatoes after that. His job was to change a barbaric society into a civilized one. That was his assignment. He doesn’t have to be whipped for our mistakes. He was there to teach a new way. So we could not reconcile that in our minds – that he had to be a scapegoat and absorb everyone’s sins by dying that way. It was a fundamental conflict in our minds that we could not resolve.

If I allowed that to happen to my son, I’d go to jail … right? All that’s needed is remorse.
Satan is God’s employee. God could wipe out Satan – why doesn’t he? These were all thought provoking because our sinful nature is innate.
 
Look we were kids and confused. We were what, 9? What was that teacher supposed to say? What could she say? I remember, she said

I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU THIS BUT … and then she chickened out.
We asked several priests and they ‘evolution’ – that the story was not meant to be taken literally. We wanted a unified understanding. They didn’t want to program us. They wanted us to be decent human beings. That was the goal. To instill a moral compass, an ethical one.

The class wanted a clear answer on that one and she didn’t fail. What could she say? What she should have said was evolution is not inconsistent with God.

The Catholic Church went out of their way to disprove that Eucharistic miracle, but there are others that were indeed authentic. A host became heart tissue – the junction point was seen – you can’t fake that – proven.

Padre Pio could bilocate. He could be in two places at the same time.

Evolution – they concede that Adam & Eve is not to be taken literally.
 
God aka Jesus is wrathful sometimes and flips tables or sends demons screaming into a herd of pigs.

The earth contains evil and we are all deserving of God’s wrath. We are not deserving of his love even though that’s what he almost always gives us.

I’m leaving the thread because you’re going 20 directions at once. If you are actually interested in a serious, focused discussion, we have many threads on subjects like Padre Pio or Evolution in the forum archives or you can start a new thread on one topic. I don’t see anything productive in just rambling about all kinds of thoughts you have. Bye now.
 
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I recall those, but they were not mass sightings like what happened in Egypt in '68.
 
I’m not bashing them. Do you remember THE FLYING NUN. It humanized nuns. Priests are human too.

They were sharp – sharper than you know, and sharper than they let on. I never met a priest who was dumb. Actually quite smart. The Vatican believes in extraterrestrial life – but they won’t tell you, at least not yet. Weren’t they briefed by the US gov’t – and the only religion to be briefed? It’s not inconsistent with God.
 
I’m just saying that was a huge point of contention in CS school, one which was openly challenged.
 
I had a huge disconnect with a Jewish doctor because he broke doctor-patient privacy and I said if a priest broke the seal of the confessional, he’s OUT OUT OUT.

So I wondered, what if two family members went to a priest to confess something that involved the other. For example, a son goes in and says I can’t forgive my dad for xyz and the father goes in and says my son is impossible. He can’t reveal what the other said and it creates a conflict. He’s not there to determine who is right or wrong but it could affect the response the 2nd person gets.
 
My point was Catholic School, at least where I went, was thought provoking, and not programming. You get a better understanding of things when ideas can be openly debated 5 days a week, vs. 1 day a week in a robotic-like mass.

You don’t just believe – it’s a belief with logic behind it. You reason it out. We didn’t know what the limitations on Jesus’ power was. If he could control the weather, he couldn’t levitate someone 3 feet off the ground and say, there, are you convinced now?

We were taught he had the power to stop his own demise at any moment but he chose not to. Where we were confused is when he said “why have you forsaken me?”.

But I remember that. He had the power to stop what was happening, and continue to teach and heal and show compassion. Instead, what happened was that nothing really changed. We didn’t get that as kids.

You have to be a good person not because you fear hell, but because it’s the right thing to do – to be. Belief will follow automatically.

It really threw us for a loop because we said, “what is heaven like? Jesus never described it visually” We didn’t think a non corporeal spiritual existence was that enticing. It was never made clear to us what heaven was like. But, hell was described in visual terms

When you learn the Vatican is into astronomy and you hear alternate interpretations, and RC school is not afraid to teach two opposing views, they earn your respect.
 
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