This is how scientists explain Catholic miracles. One bacterium is enough

Very often we hear of extraordinary phenomena that faith gives the meaning of a miracle. Miracles are an essential part of Catholic spirituality. It is enough to mention the apparitions, stigmas or the so-called Eucharistic miracles. We can also look at these events from a medical perspective.

1. Many of the popular Catholic miracles may have a simple scientific explanation
2. The miracle at Fatima was explained as the harmfulness of gazing at the sun for a long time
3. Saints’ stigmas may be the result of self-mutilation resulting from mental disorders
4. Bacteria, blood sticks, in turn, can be responsible for the so-called. Eucharistic miracles
5. You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page

The miracle of the sun in Fatima

The story of the famous miracle in Fatima began in May 1917, when three children (aged 7, 9 and 10) said they had met Our Lady. The oldest girl, Lucia, was the only one who spoke to her. Soon the children told their parents about the incident. Many inhabitants of the village where the children lived believed the little shepherds. As the weeks and months passed, more and more believers made pilgrimages to Fatima, where the children claimed to be visited by Mary. Still no one else saw her.

The most famous incident related to the Fatima apparitions took place on October 13, 1917. That day, about 70 thousand people came to Fatima. people who hoped that the Mother of God would perform the miracle previously announced by Lucia. Some viewers thirsty for supernatural phenomena experienced then what is known today as the “miracle of the sun”.

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The participants of this event described what they saw at the time very differently. Some claimed to have seen the sun dance across the sky, while others claimed that the sun was approaching the Earth in a zig-zag motionthat made them fear that it might collide with our planet. Some reported seeing bright colors come out of the sun in a psychedelic pinwheel pattern. Thousands of other people present at that time, in turn, saw nothing unusual. The whole event was supposed to last about 10 minutes.

The Fatima Revelations – Scientific Explanations

How does science explain what happened at Fatima? It is possible that the crowd was able to observe what we call the marginal sun that day. It is an optical phenomenon in the atmosphere. A bright spot of light looks like another sun.

The phenomenon of the side sun, however, is stationary. It doesn’t explain why people thought they saw the sun moving across the sky. It is most likely that the “dance of the sun” is an illusion of pilgrims and not a phenomenon in the sky. There is a simple explanation for this anomaly – a common optical illusion that we deal with when we stare at the Sun too long. On October 13, 1917, thousands of people were staring at them intensely, hoping to see a miracle. If you stare at the sun for a long time, your eyes and pupils will collapse. It may then give the impression of “dancing” or spinning the sun.

In addition, there was probably an element of the so-called collective hysteria. In this situation, one person who claimed to be seeing something unusual and was very excited about it was enough, while others, suggesting their reaction, began to see similar things themselves. The power of suggestion can be really powerful, and it’s not hard to find examples where the supernatural mind sees things that don’t really exist. An additional factor to consider is pareidolia. It is the phenomenon of looking for familiar shapes in random details.

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Saints’ Stigmas – The Effect of Their Self-mutilation?

The stigmas of saints recognized by the Catholic Church are for many a sign of their union with Christ. In a sense, this may be true. A mind fixed on one self-destructive idea (which is certainly the conscious consent to be crucified) may behave in an extremely harmful way. Some saints’ lives may indicate this. One of the most representative stigmata was Padre Pio. For decades, it had stigmas that resembled the wounds that were to be formed on the body of Christ as a result of the crucifixion. However, the X-rays of the stigmas on Padre Pio’s hands, made in the 50s, did not show any damage to the bones.

Sergio Luzzatto, author of the book “Padre Pio: Miracles and Stigmas in a Secular Age”, described the account of pharmacist Maria De Vito, who confessed that Padre Pio secretly ordered from her four grams of highly irritating phenol (carbolic acid). It could be used to loosen wounds.

I was once a supporter of Padre Pio. I first met him on July 31, 1919. He personally handed me an empty bottle once and asked if I could take it from Foggia to San Giovanni Rotondo. It was supposed to be filled with four grams of pure carbolic acid. He said he needed it to sanitize the syringes

Maria De Vito said.

Joe Nickell, an American skeptic and researcher of paranormal phenomena, also points out an interesting point, according to whom the gloves in which Padre Pio began to appear did not result from his modesty.

In time, Pio began to wear fingerless gloves, supposedly to cover his stigmas out of great modesty. However, it seems to me that the practice was intended to eliminate the need to constantly exacerbate wounds

Nickell says.

Since childhood, the monk showed a tendency to mortify himself. Phenol poisoning could also be responsible for the hallucinations Padre Pio was supposed to experience, which he called his daily battle with demons.

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Teresa Neumann – the family interrupted the mystic’s research

The case of Teresa Neumann is no less interesting. German mystic and stigmatist for 40 years she was not to eat anything but the host. However, an examination of her urine showed that the woman’s diet was certainly not limited to the wafer.

Professor Martini from the University Hospital of Bonn wrote a special report on Teresa Neumann. He considered the behavior of the woman suspicious due to the fact that the stigmata were bleeding out of the German woman only when the observers were asked to leave the room. In addition, Neumann was to be tightly wrapped in bedding, which made her observation difficult and gave room for misunderstandings.

According to psychoanalytical research, the stigmas in Neumann may have been the result of symptoms of post-traumatic stress. The mystic could self-injure.

It is also worth paying attention to the peculiar mental states of the German stigma. The German woman displayed a series of split personality behaviors. Sometimes she acted like a child of several years, and other times she spoke of “Teresa Neumann” from the perspective of another person. We can cite, for example, the answer that she once addressed to the parish priest who was visiting her: “You cannot talk to Teresa now, because she is asleep”.

The family eventually refused to study or observe any further. They only happened once. The beatification process of Teresa Neumann is currently underway. A German woman can be declared a saint.

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Bacteria can do “Eucharistic miracles”

Sometimes the so-called Eucharistic miracles. At the Council of Lateran IV it was stated that during the Eucharist the bread and wine are changed into the actual body and blood of Christ. Since that time The Church recognized 132 Eucharistic miracles as real. However, you can hear about such events much more often. One such incident took place on December 25, 2013 in the Church of St. Jacek in Legnica. According to gazeta.pl, during the Christmas mass, one of the priests dropped the consecrated host on the ground. According to beliefs, it was transformed into the body of Christ beforehand, and therefore requires a special procedure. Such a host must be picked up and then placed in a vessel of water to dissolve it there. One of the priests discovered after a few days that some of it had indeed dissolved, but some red-colored parts remained in the water.

The bishop of Legnica appointed a special commission to investigate the causes of this event. The teaching of the Church on the Eucharist indicated that the so-called the Eucharistic miracle. The fragment of the host was therefore sent for research to the Medical University of Wrocław, where it was not found that the red elements were tissues of the human body. The church commission, dissatisfied with this decision, decided to send the sample to another laboratory. This time to the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin. Muscle tissue and degraded human DNA were found in the sample. However, the researchers did not receive the original sample.

We received it in the form of a paraffin block. A feature of such samples is a high risk of their contamination resulting from the procedure of tissue preparation for histopathological examinations. This means that various contaminants, including human DNA, can get into the sample because it passes through many hands. It is always more reliable to examine the underlying evidence. If such material were to be investigated in a criminal case, its value would be negligible

– said professor Mirosław Parafiniuk, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, in an interview with the gazeta.pl portal.

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The Eucharistic miracle is not the most likely answer to the question of the cause of the host’s unusual red color. The author of the popular Crazy Science blog, Piotr Stanisławski, in the pages of gazeta.pl, presented an explanation of this phenomenon, which does not require the interference of supernatural forces. The culprit of all the confusion could have been the bacterium serratia marcescens, known in Polish as the miracle stick or the blood stick. This organism eagerly eats starch, which is the basic component of the host. The blood rod produces a pigment called prodigiosinwhich has a deep red color resembling blood. In addition, prodigiosin is insoluble in water, which explains why some of the host did not disappear.

The miracle stick is a very common bacterium, it also lives in our body. Her presence in a crowded church is therefore not surprising. If, on the other hand, it is placed in hot water for a few days, as required by the church procedure, it can reproduce quickly, making quite an impression.

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