Why do non-Catholic religions possess mysticism?

[HailStarofSea]

There are people who are Hindu who are incorruptible. There exists Islamic stigmata. Why?

Paranormalia has been a bit quiet recently, while I’m trying to finish two books, my own and a client’s. How these things do gobble up time. Matt Colborn, who has posted a couple of times, doubtless would have done so again but he too is in the middle of a book - on consciousness, as I’m sure he’ll tell us about here before long. So: books three, blogs zero.

Ali_in In the meantime I’ve been interested in the baby in Dagestan who is apparently running a sort of Koranic slide show on his skin. Ali Yakubov is said to have exhibited the word ‘Allah’ in Arabic on his chin at a few weeks of age, and subsequently entire Koranic verses have been appearing on various parts of his body, before fading and being replaced with new ones. Initially the parents did not talk about it, but then the phrase, “Show these signs to people” came into view, and now their household is being inundated with pilgrims from all over the region. Performances are twice weekly, on Mondays and Thursday nights.

There are a few other details. The child is said to have been diagnosed with coronary heart disease and cerebral spastic infantile paralysis at birth, but he recovered suddenly when the scripts started appearing on his body. When this happens, his mother says, he cries, his temperature rises and he seems to be very uncomfortable. The parents themselves are not particularly religious, but the local muftis are all aflutter and maintain the event is a “warning to all Muslims of Russia and Dagestan … that they should turn to the wisdom of the religion of Allah, repent of their sins, and abandon their discord, conflicts, and the fratricidal confrontation that today shakes the blessed land of Dagestan and the entire Caucasus.”

A good sentiment in such a troubled region - but is any of it true? I’m rather allergic to religious ‘miracles’ - my first reaction was an inward groan and the thought, here we go again (It’s all those horrible ‘weeping’ statues - it just all seems so tacky and sentimental). I’d want to know a great deal more before deciding whether or not it’s a hoax.

That said, there are plenty of precedents of this sort of thing in Christianity. Stigmata have been documented frequently enough to be considered a genuine psycho-physiological phenomenon. According to Irreducible Mind hundreds of cases have been reported from the 13th century, in the case of St Francis of Assisi, to the present day, although perhaps only around 50 with adequate testimony. It’s usually linked to intense religiosity in young Catholic women suffering from ‘hysteria’ (whatever that is) - the marks correspond to Christ’s wounds on the cross.

monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2009/10/islamic-stigmata.html

 

[jwakja]

IMO, people don’t follow Catholicism because they feel they know more than what God asked of them and basically set their own rules to “follow” Him. Being a Catholic in the world today is tough and looks like most people don’t think they really need to accept the laws of God to obtain eternal life. Heck, even the significant number of those who think its OK to be a muslim and fail to accept Jesus as the Son of God and Savior is astounding! Can you imagine what God thinks of that? Eternity is a long time!

 

[Mintaka]

1. God calls everyone to love and serve him. The more you know about God, the more you are able to interpret His signs. But He does not leave anyone without that call. So naturally there are plenty of people who have religious experiences, even if they are not very clear on what they mean or Who they come from.
2. The yearning for God that some people has is strong enough to give them various mental impressions of miraculous experiences, whether or not they are real.
3. The Devil and his minions really do envy humans their relationship with God, even if the human is pagan and clueless. They fear and hate God’s constant call, and so they try to trick humans onto the wrong paths with their abilities (which are considerable, since they’re angels, even though fallen ones).
4. There’s obviously a lot of faking of miracles and mysticism by those who want to get attention, power, and/or money.

The specific case named by the article above would seem to be either fraud or something demonic, though of course it could be Munchausen’s by proxy. Whatever is the cause, it’s a bad sign that the child is made uncomfortable and has a high temperature. Most miracles do no harm and cause no discomfort (though there are exceptions like the stigmata, when someone old enough to make decisions has asked to suffer along with Jesus and it is granted). Ecstatic contact with God makes one immune to pain.

So for a “miracle” to make an innocent child, one well under the age of reason, suffer – well, that doesn’t sound like the kind of miracle that comes from God.

“Hysteria” is an old medical catch-all term. It literally means “womb disease.” It’s supposed today to mean “weird stuff that happens when a pack of people is upset”, but is often used in older books for “this woman is upset a lot and I don’t like it,” or “women stuff that I the doctor am not going to bother trying to understand,” like post-partum depression or PMS effects.

St. Francis got the stigmata first, and he was a middle-aged man. Similarly with St. Padre Pio and the many male stigmatists, although there have been a few young guys and a few old guys ready to keel over. There have also been many female stigmatists of all ages. In every case I can think of, people who receive the stigmata are people who spend a lot of time, for years, meditating on Christ’s Passion and yearning to take on some of Christ’s burden for Him (as per St. Paul).

It’s not something that happens to random crazy teenage chicks. (Although random crazy chicks have been known to cut themselves to try to imitate stigmata.)

 

[Heuchler]

Assume these are real and that the Catholic Church is the true church where miracles are supposed to happen. So, wouldn’t the Devil love to make these miracles appear elsewhere to make it appear normal and discredit those miracels which are real. Either way, stigmata will always be specifically Catholic making an islamic stigmata very ironic.

 

[GEddie]

Because human beings have the potential for mystical experience. It is part of our psycho-body makeup. It does not originate in reception into the Catholic Church.

Nor are all such experiences necessarily from God.

Islamic stigmata? Since Jesus is at best a sEcondary figure in Islam and they believe He never went to the cross at all, what is their interpretation of the stigmata?

ICXC NIKA

 

[Vouthon]

My dear brothers and sisters

Anyone can have a genuine mystical experience of the One True God, of Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit even if they lived on the moon and had never heard of Jesus at all!

This is because the Holy Spirit is at work in every human heart, drawing all people towards Himself. There are many non-Catholics who - spiritually speaking - are joined to the Church through implicit baptism of desire, that is if they realized that the Catholic Church was the true religion, then they would instantly convert because they have grace from God, the true marks of a Catholic and are following the Will of God the best they possibly can given their lack of knowledge of his Church, according to the dictates of their consciences.

All religions, all cultures, all human hearts possess at least a modicum of inspired truth and all truth - no matter where it comes from - is inspired by the Holy Spirit, as Saint Justin Martyr and Saint Thomas Aquinas explained:

“…All that is true, by whomsoever it has been said, has its origin in the Spirit…”

• Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Catholic theologian, mystic and Doctor of the Church

In saying this Saint Thomas was merely attesting to this Sacred Tradition had been spoken of much earlier by all the Fathers, for example Saint Justin Martyr and Augustine:

“…All truth, wherever it is found, belongs to us as Christians and is Christian truth…”

• Saint Justin Martyr (AD 100–165), Early Catholic Church Father

Pope John Paul II is particularly illuminating in this respect:

"…Every quest of the human spirit for truth and goodness, and in the last analysis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The various religions arose precisely from this primordial human openness to God. At their origins we often find founders who, with the help of God’s Spirit, achieved a deeper religious experience. Handed on to others, this experience took form in the doctrines, rites and precepts of the various religions.

In every authentic religious experience, the most characteristic expression is prayer. Because of the human spirit’s constitutive openness to God’s action of urging it to self-transcendence, we can hold that “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person”. We experienced an eloquent manifestation of this truth at the World Day of Prayer for Peace on 27 October 1986 in Assisi, and on other similar occasions of great spiritual intensity.

1. The Holy Spirit is not only present in other religions through authentic expressions of prayer. “The Spirit’s presence and activity”, as I wrote in the Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, “affect not only individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions” (n. 28)…"

***- Blessed Pope John Paul II, General Audience Address, September 16, 1998, Vatican ***

So we should not, as Catholics, be surprised to find Muslims or Jews or Buddhists or Sikhs etc. who have genuine mystical experiences of the Holy Spirit.