Photographs of Blessed Mother?

[Liberian]

A Skeptic,

I would suggest that Fatima and Conyers are two very different kettles of fish. At Fatima, the miracle of the sun was witnessed by skeptics–college professors and newspaper journalists–who had gone out for the specific purpose of proving that nothing supernatural would happen. Conyers, on the other hand, is nothing but religious zeal and hysteria.

I visited Conyers during one of the supposed apparitions shortly after I converted to Catholicism. I can truly say that praying a Rosary with ten thousand people is an awe-inspiring experience. I can also truly say that I didn’t see anything going on that I could not explain by strictly natural phenomena. There were some weeping statues, but the temperature was in the forties and the humidity was near 100 percent. One would expect dew. One woman showed me a photograph she had taken of me with what she said looked like a miraculous medal perched in front of my forehead; to me it looked like some stray light got in while the shutter was open. Other people tried to give or sell me photographs of the Virgin Mary that they said were miraculous, but which looked to me like obvious double exposures.

I would not judge Fatima based on what went on at Conyers.

• Liberian

 

[grammyof3]

If The Blessed Mother accomplished nothing more at Conyers than getting 10,000 people to say the Rosary she accomplished a miracle. Consider all of those prayers being converted to graces for an ailing world. The miracle is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Joe_Gloor]

Liberian:

At Fatima, the miracle of the sun was witnessed by skeptics–college professors and newspaper journalists–who had gone out for the specific purpose of proving that nothing supernatural would happen.

As I understand it, there were people present at Fatima who didn’t see anything unusual.

 

[Della]

askeptic:

There definitely seems to be a negative correlation between scientific literacy and belief in various supernatural phenomena. Have you ever watched televangelist healing shows? Presumably those people believe they are being healed. People have also been fooled by psychics and the likes of the spoon-bending Uri Geller.

Yes, people can be very gullible.

If Mary really is appearing, she is not doing a very good job of distinguishing her genuine apparations from the fake ones.

If that were her job, I’d say the same, but it isn’t. It’s up to the Church to sort through these things and decide which are “worthy of belief” and which aren’t.

I never understood why Mary would waste her time appearing in some backward part of the world to tell people to pray lest they go to hell.

And why shouldn’t she? Are you a snob? Do you think she is? And she doesn’t tell the seers to pray lest they go to hell but to pray for those who are in danger of going to hell. A bit of a difference there, don’t you think?

Why not come and tell people how to cure cancer or to preserve the environment? And if she is going to show people hell, why not appear to North Korean leaders and threaten them with hell unless they stop murdering and torturing civilians?

The first things you mentioned are for human beings to investigate and solve. And as to appearing to North Korean leaders, do you think they’d listen to her if she did? They have all the information they need now to know better but they choose not to do what is right. Is Mary supposed to twist their arms and make them behave?

There are people who claim to have been abudcted by aliens, people who claim to have seen ghosts etc. I don’t believe any of them, and I see no reason to believe those who claim to have seen Mary.

These other things have been investigated by experts and declared fraudulent or the workings of the imagination. The approved apparitions in the Church have also been investigated, not just by Church leaders, but by experts with no ties to the Church whom our Church leaders respect and whose decisions they go by. The Church does not claim that Mary appeared but rather that there is no evidence that she didn’t–it not positive proof they want but the absence of any fraud or other explanation. There is a grueling criteria such phenomena have to meet before being declared “worthy of belief” and even then Catholics are free, for good cause, not to believe in them.

To debunk another “miracle” consider bleeding/crying statues:

I have read that these statues are made of somewhat porous material, but are painted with waterproof paint. Filling the statue with liquid and scratching the paint in certain areas will let the liquid drip from it and create the illusion of bleeding/crying statues.

And if these methods have been used, the Church will find it out because it is quite rigorous in investigating such things. The Church, more than anyone else, wants to expose fraud so that the faithful aren’t led astray by false seers and prophets.

 

[Eden]

Gottle of Geer:

And, there is nothing numinous about them - that is the real problem. ##

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

I don’t agree that these apparition photos have nothing numinous about them. By the way, have you researched how much press coverage these apparitions in Egypt received - in a Muslim country nonetheless?!

Here is a look at the crowd watching:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[Liberian]

Grammy of 3,

I will certainly agree with you that 10,000 people praying a Rosary all at once is a great and wonderful thing, a much-needed and powerful occasion of grace. I would not term it a “miracle” in the strict sense of the term, though, meaning that no natural laws were suspended for it to happen. All the same, it was quite the experience and I certainly have no desire to minimize it.

• Liberian

 

[Rebecca_New]

I think one of the reasons Jesus told Thomas “Blessed he who does not see and believes” is just this. When we pass we will no longer have eyes to see and ears to hear, and yet eyes have not seen nor ears have not heard the glory that awaits us. There must be a point that we are all missing here.

 

[Mike_D30]

These are complete obvious frauds. Seriously do you really think Mary looks exactly like the Mary statue we keep in our homes? Or do you think she looks like a Palestinian Jew?

Frauds like this do much more damage to the Catholic Church, than good. I mean the photshopping isn’t even done well, the same image backgrounds are used over and over.

 

[Eden]

Mike_D30:

These are complete obvious frauds. Seriously do you really think Mary looks exactly like the Mary statue we keep in our homes? Or do you think she looks like a Palestinian Jew?

Frauds like this do much more damage to the Catholic Church, than good. I mean the photshopping isn’t even done well, the same image backgrounds are used over and over.

It’s obvious the pictures in the first link are. I don’t agree that the Zeitoun apparitions are. They were well-documented and occurred regularly over a year or so. They were witnessed by thousands. In fact, the first witness was a Muslim construction worker working in a building across from the church. He was afraid at first that the woman he saw would fall from the roof. Some have speculated that the church where she appeared would have been located around the area where the Holy Family took refuge in Egypt.