And the dancing suns? How many people have damaged their retinas? Fr. Phillip Pavic, who went out of his way to get assigned to Medjugorje and spent many years there, is now on the flip side and speaks of damaged retinas in people.
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This is another reason why I’m militantly adamant in my opposition to Medjugorje, because I’m an Optometrist.**
In Medjugorje, **people are told to STARE at the sun **to get see the "miraculous dancing of the sun. " People are told they’re seeing miracles.These are not miracles. They can be explained by something called Entoptic Phenomenon, or an event that occurs further back along the visual pathway.
Entoptic phenomena are visual perceptions caused by eye anatomy. Examples include floaters, color changes caused by brunescent cataracts (brunescent cataracts have an amber color), the ability to see your own white and red blood vessels while looking at a blue sky, etc… The bouncing of the sun can be explained by flexing and dilation of the iris muscles.
When one looks at a very bright light the iris will initially constrict , making the pupil very small. As the eye starts to adapt to the new illumination, the iris will flex in and out, called “iris hippus,” or “pupillary play” before finally settling on a slightly larger pupil diameter than the original constriction. Pupillary hippus can explain why the sun bounces when you stare directly into it.
Medjugorje pilgrims are told the after image (the huge dark spot) seen after looking at the “miracle of the sun” is a miracle. It is not. The dark spot is a result of complete depletion of the retinal photopigments, causing the brain to percieve darkness on the area of the retina where the sun used to be. The dark spot may also indicate the future location of a solar retinal burn.
Did you know you can get a Macular solar burn from looking at the moon during a summer’s night? It used to be a common finding in astronomers. They’ve been educated and now take precautions. Just imagine the damage you can do to your eyes by staring directly at the sun at high noon!
The people who’ve had retinal burns as a result of viewing the “miracle” of the sun at Medjugorje should sue the visionaries. That’ll stop their visions.
The pilgrims are told, also, that while staring at the sun it’ll turn dark in the middle, forming a Eucharistic host in the center of the sun. This is no miracle. It’s called the Troxler effect. It’s a dimming of the percieved light with prolonged viewing of bright light due retinal photopigment depletion and perceptual changes in the brain.
We often see Troxler effect while performing visual field tests on patients, especially in the second eye. I have a Humphrey FDT Visual screener, and the company that designed it had to numerically account for Troxer effect in their software package, otherwise the second tested eye will always appear visually weaker than the other. The dark spot seen in the center of the sun, which shifts when you blink or move the eye slightly, IS the Troxler effect, not a Eucharistic host.
Another “miracle” they claim is the red peripheral field seen in addition to the dark after image after viewing the “Miracle of the Sun.” This occurs because the sun is SO BRIGHT that it also depletes retinal pigments surrounding the macula. When you look away the brain perceives this as an overall darkening of the field, peripherally, and a dark spot centrally where the image of the sun hit the retina.
**And yes. Medjugorje greatly interests me because it’s now a Public Health problem in my field of work. **
Solar burns are virtually incurable and MORE visually devastating than Macular degeneration, due to Visual acuity loss AND metamorphopsia (vision distortion).
I say “virtually incurable” because if an epiretinal membrane (scar tissue) occurs instead of a frank burn, the membrane can be peeled of surgically (by hand!) by a retinal surgeon. Only—the procedure is very risky. If the patient moves his eye by as much as a millimeter or two while the surgeon peels it off with special tweezers, all bets on visual recovery are off. Let’s just say retinal surgeons don’t like doing this procedure.
And if you’re lucky enough NOT to get a Solar burn, then at the very least you’re now more likely to get Macular Degeneration when you’re old—and that’s no fun either----especially the Wet type. And if you don’t get Macular degeneration from it, you’ll probably get cataracts a few years earlier.
May God have mercy on the souls of those visionaries. This is a shame.
