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GordonP
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That does nothing at all to prove that the body in question was not embalmed. Sorry. Even as a Christian I would not be convinced.
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ReaderT
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What is the alternative scenario? Archbishop was a monk. The monks dressed his body for burial. Did they embalm him in secret (against Orthodox tradition) and cover it up? Do they have a monk who secretly studied embalming (again against tradition)?
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GordonP
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Why are you concocting silly conspiracy theories? It decreases your credibility.
The likely chain of events is that the body was embalmed because, as the reporter said, at the time of the funeral, the weather was unusually hot and the body was to be put on extended public display. No slyness was required. They simply hired a funeral director to come in and perform the procedure. Just because this wasn’t advertised doesn’t mean that it was “covered up”.
By the way, there is nothing in Orthodox canon law that forbids embalming. It is merely a tradition. One that can be dispensed with for good reason.
Again, I don’t understand at all your eagerness to spin conspiracy theories about this.
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Pattylt
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I’m sorry you muted the thread. Just in case you still take a look, I need to respond to this comment.
If God appeared before me, before or at my death, I would believe…with all my heart I would believe. I’m not refusing to believe in God because I just don’t want to. I did want to. I just don’t believe because I have no feelings of belief, no evidence TO believe in and no sense whatsoever that there is a God of any kind.
No, I’m not refusing to believe in God, I’m just incapable of belief in a God that behaves exactly like a non existent God behaves. I’ve never had any experience to the contrary. A miracle in my life might help quite a bit, but I’ve never experienced one. I agree, any miracle is meant for those that witness it. They aren’t meant for anyone else.
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Pattylt
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Sorry to be trite but an amputee regrowing a limb where it can be observed by doctors and documented would do the trick for me!
On the Archbishop that displays no sign of decay…is this still observable? Do you have a link? Embalming seems the most likely and can easily be tested…was it? I’m unfamiliar with this miracle.
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ReaderT
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There isn’t any evidence that any of that happened, though. They didn’t hire a funeral director (we have our own services which go back 1,500 years; nobody needed to stage a funeral for us.) Also, a director wouldn’t have had access to the body, which would’ve been kept at his monastery, or in a morgue.
By the way, even Bishops known to be Saints (who were on much longer “extended public display”) were not embalmed. Bishop John Maximovitch was a Saint but his body wasn’t embalmed, and we know that because it corrupted (which is fine - you don’t need an incorrupt body to be declared a Saint).
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ReaderT
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Regarding the amputee - it is an interesting idea, but I can hear the naysayers: “That’s not a miracle. They did it with stem cells.” The Smithsonian also says scientific regrowth will be possible soon (maybe it already is).
The Archbishop: there’s a link in post #14.They did seal him in a new coffin (the reason they exhumed him in the first place is because they had to bury him hastily in a cemetery, and finally finished a chapel for him). Embalming is against Orthodox practice and nobody with access to the body would’ve done it (definitely not his monastery who took and dressed his body).
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Pattylt
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I think it is linked incorrectly…I just get the post again. No worries! I can do a search. Thanks.
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PickyPicky
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I suppose what seems odd to me is that God should intervene in such insignificant ways — preserved bodies, strange lights, bit of tissue, etc — when humanity has such huge needs in areas where God could intervene to such wonderful effect.
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Assuming he was indeed unembalmed, this is pretty amazing. I read the article from Dallas’s Russian newspaper (article was in English, I don’t know Russian well enough to read a whole article like that), and in all honesty, said to myself “well, there’s one less reason not to become Orthodox!”. Surely the power of God is at work here.
Don’t worry, as much as I revere Orthodoxy, I’m not about to convert. That little matter about needing to be subject to the Roman Pontiff, as well as the handful of errors that Orthodox make in matters of morality (e.g., tolerating contraception under certain circumstances), keep me from doing something like that. Besides, my spirituality is Latin and not Eastern. I pray for unity, and yes, I did invoke Archbishop Dmitry last night, in my prayers before retiring, to obtain graces for my family.
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FiveLinden
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A photo of hands tells me nothing. Even if it was clear that the entire body was in some way intact I would want it compared with other bodies buried in a similar situation. I would also want to see evidence that the body was indeed ‘incorrupt’. For example, internal organs being intact etc.
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Dan123
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This is what I was going to say. What’s the normal rate of decay for a body prepared for burial and entombed the way they normally do? How much data is there to support that? And the hands look very different, ‘untouched by time’ seems a bit of a stretch. “Not as decayed as we would have expected” seems a better fit, but less miraculous.
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FiveLinden
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I have been hoping for an incorrupt body that was buried at sea.
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Dan_Defender
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Yes and you atheists also don’t believe in an afterlife. Death is final and there is nothing after that. What follows logically from that is that then it doesn’t matter what the next person believes or does, it all comes to nothing after death. So why promote atheism? why come to CAF to persuade the faithful to fall away? THAT is what doesn’t make sense.
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FiveLinden
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- Many atheists believe in an afterlife.
- What people do in their lives survives their deaths. For example, people who contribute to a fairer society contribute to the fairness experienced by people after they die. That matters. The idea that you only matter if you are immortal is to me a much stranger idea.
- I don’t come here to persuade. I come here to understand belief. Can you find an example of when I have tried to change someone’s beliefs? I only question why they have them in the face of observations I make about the world.
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Dan_Defender
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I never heard this one before. Wouldn’t you need ‘proof’ of an afterlife? and what kind of afterlife without God?
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FiveLinden
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I think there are several hundred million Buddhists (not all of them) who are non-theists. Spiritualists I have met are very strong on the afterlife but generally don’t believe in a personal God.
I also do not believe in an '‘afterlife’ but it is distinct from a belief in god(s).
Catholics for example believe in a God but think that there is no afterlife for most living things he created. Some people just believe this the other way around.
As I keep saying, being an atheist predicts nothing about what else you believe. There are atheists who think mass murder is a fine thing to do and atheists who, literally, would not harm a fly. It just means you don’t believe in god(s). I imagine you and I each do not believe in unicorns but that predicts nothing about what else we think is real.
I also do not believe in an '‘afterlife’ but it is distinct from a belief in god(s).
Catholics for example believe in a God but think that there is no afterlife for most living things he created. Some people just believe this the other way around.
As I keep saying, being an atheist predicts nothing about what else you believe. There are atheists who think mass murder is a fine thing to do and atheists who, literally, would not harm a fly. It just means you don’t believe in god(s). I imagine you and I each do not believe in unicorns but that predicts nothing about what else we think is real.
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MPat
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Not a good sign, I’m afraid.
Especially given that you do not point to any specific reason for failure to understand, like a possibly misspelled word with unclear meaning or ungrammatical sequence of words.
Well, does that lead to any action or conclusion from your side?
I still see no references to any peer reviewed papers here.
And this is a matter on which peer reviewed papers can actually be written.
For that matter, you did not even say how that is supposed to be different from what I (in your opinion) understood you to be saying.
No, it would not.
Observe: Miracle of Calanda - Wikipedia.
It has been documented, it has been examined by doctors.
But you will soon discover some other requirement.
And yet, your faith in your own open-mindedness, in your willingness to believe if only there was evidence that was “good enough”, will stay unshaken, although you will not be able to present any similar documentation to support it.
And you won’t be able to justify this difference in standards or thresholds. In fact, it would be easier to justify it, if it was the other way around: having higher requirements for what one sees as one’s own good traits makes sense, for overestimation of one’s abilities can easily “contaminate” everything else, and it is hard to undo.
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c4csp
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We must pray for atheists. We do not need to prove anything to them. God has provided enough for believers. We pray and hope all those lost souls come to accept Christ here on earth because after we die, it is heaven or hell. As Catholics, we must always be reminded that hell is real and many are there.
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FiveLinden
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This is an interesting point. ‘Proof’ seems to me to follow ‘belief’ in the case of many Christians. To me, a non-believer, it is the other way around. In my personal life I try hard not to ‘believe’ things but to draw only temporary conclusions from what I have observed, pending the arrival of new information and insights. It is not an easy thing to do. I have a feeling the tendency to ‘believe’ without clear evidence is hard-wired into us and probably played some part in our evolution by making groups stronger.
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