Weeping Madonna statutes and apparitions: Are they merely religious fantasies?

A weeping statue is a statue which has been claimed to be shedding tears or weeping by supernatural means. Statues weeping tears of a substance which appears to be human blood, oil, and scented liquids have all been reported. Other claimed phenomena are sometimes associated with weeping statues such as miraculous healing, the formation of figures in the tear lines, and the scent of roses. These events are generally reported by some Christians and initially attract some pilgrims, (sometimes many) but are in most cases disallowed by the upper levels of the Church or proven to be hoaxes.

Reported weeping statues are most often of the Virgin Mary and are at times accompanied by claims of Marian apparitions. However, to date only one single example of a combined weeping statue and apparition (namely Our Lady of Akita) has been approved by the Vatican and the rest have usually been dismissed as hoaxes. An unusual nature of the Our Lady of Akita apparitions was that unlike other cases, the entire nation of Japan was able to view the tears of the statue of the Virgin Mary on national television. As the story goes, the voice of Mary spoke to Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa. It was also said to have sent out a brilliant light and the perspiration it sent out smelled of perfume. Hundreds of people are said to have witnessed events, including blood coming from the statue's right palm. It has also been reported that the University of Akita confirmed the liquids coming from the statue were human. I don’t doubt that the blood is human but whose blood is it? Unless I have a true answer to that question, I will look at the miracle with a jaundiced eye. If you believe that the blood is that of the Virgin Mary, your belief may be beyond reason.

Authorities of the Catholic Church have been very careful in their approach and treatment of weeping statues, and generally set very high barriers for their acceptance. For instance when a statue of the popular Saint Padre Pio in Messina, Sicily was found to have tears of blood one day in 2002, Church officials quickly ordered tests that showed the blood belonged to a woman and then dismissed the case as a hoax. Even at the local level, Catholic priests have expelled people who claim weeping statues from their local Church

Skeptics, point to the fact that making a fake weeping statue is relatively easy. At some skeptic conferences ‘do it yourself weeping statue kits’ are on sale now. Skeptics have provided examples of weeping statues that have been obvious hoaxes

Another possible explanation attributes the so-called tears to condensation. The tears that statues appear to weep are said to actually be beads of condensation from microscopic cracks on the surface of the statues. Unpublished reports of the testing have supposedly been able to verify this theory, but peer reviewed scientific research is rarely, if ever, carried out into the phenomenon.

In 1995, a Madonna statue appeared to weep blood in the town of Civitavecchia in Italy. The local bishop said that he himself had seen it weep. The blood on the statue was later found to be male. The statue’s owner, Fabio Gregori, refused to take a DNA test. After the Civitavecchia case, dozens of reputedly miraculous statues were reported. Almost all were shown to be hoaxes, where blood, red paint, or water was splashed on the faces of the statues.

Weeping paintings are a related phenomenon, but to date not a single case of a weeping painting has been approved either by the Roman Catholic or Coptic churches and most of them have turned out to be recognized as hoaxes. For example, a painting of the Virgin Mary which drew many visitors to Christ of the Hills Monastery near Blanco, Texas in the 1980s was said to weep myrrh, but was uncovered as a fraud in the 2000s.

The so-called miracle of the weeping Madonna shedding tears of holy oil in the front yard of a home in Windsor, Ontario became a place for worshippers to pray. It annoyed motorists stuck in traffic who yelled obscenities and finally the homeowner was ordered bt city officials to replace the statue with a note urging pilgrims to stay away.

As a potential holy site, this one has gotten off to a quick start and then expiring in mere months instead of the centuries that many holy sites sustain. The local Catholic diocese in Windsor seemed relieved to find out that the homeowner was an Orthodox Christian so they could pass ‘Our Lady of a Windsor Front Lawn’ over to the Orthodox Church.

Father John Ayoub of the St. Ignatius of Antioch Church was reported as saying that he investigated the matter and concluded it was not miraculous. "If you want to believe the owner, you are free to believe her." He added that the woman is still a beloved member of the parish notwithstanding the fact that she refused to have the statute closely examined.

To the skeptical mind, such occurrences are part of the spectrum of religious fantasies that includes such idiocies as the US$28,000 sale on eBay of a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich with an image of Mary on it. The woman who sold the sandwich believed the image had helped her to win $70,000 at the casino and the buyer must have believed her. Believe me, if the woman who originally owed it got rich, why haven’t we heard that the woman who bought it got rich? One thing is for sure. That stupid woman is US$28,000 poorer.

Father John Matusiak, of the Orthodox Church in America, remembers a sighting near his Illinois parish: ''I remember that people said they saw the face of Mary at an underpass in Chicago. It was the water dripping that made it look that way. People are demanding signs, but if the sign they want is Mary appearing in water dripping formations on a freeway underpass, rather than the love of God, there's something weird with that."

Then there was Italian church custodian Vincenzo Di Costanzo, who used his own blood to claim a statue of the Virgin Mary was bleeding. Mr. Di Costanzo clearly had never heard about DNA testing or watched an episode of Law and Order.
These are the kind of stories that make the religious cringe because it stamps all hard-to-explain manifestations of faith under the same heading of hocus pocus or fraud.

That stereotype, though, neglects the testimony of learned men and women of good will and intelligence who speak about being driven to their knees in front of a weeping Orthodox icon or the millions of people who go on pilgrimage to such holy sites as Fatima and Lourdes, where apparitions of Mary are said to have happened.
The Church looks to see whether there is something supernatural going on here such as a direct interaction from God. Or is it the intervention of a good angel sent by God? Or is bad angels sent by Satan to bring disorder among the faithful? They want to see if what is happening is bearing good fruit among the faithful. But in fact, only a very few weeping statues are ever recognized by the Catholic Church as holy sites.

For the Orthodox Church, those who follow the Eastern branch of Christianity, the appearance of tears or blood or oil seem more common and less shocking. Their interest is not so much the tears, but what praying in front of the object brings to believers.

"The icon is always seen as an integral part of the Church's life and as a means of God bestowing His grace and mercy upon the world. Within the 2,000-year history of the Holy Church, these are normal occurrences," said Father Michael Matsko of the Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church in Livonia, Mich., near the site of a famous weeping icon depicting Mary and the child Jesus.

The church believes that the miracle is not that the icon is weeping but how praying in front of that icon changes people's lives.

Colin Donovan, the vice-president of theology at Alabama-based EWTN, the largest Catholic broadcaster in the United States said, "The Catholic Church is not going to spend its time investigating images on tacos. Dioceses are loath to get into these things if they don't have to."

Even with apparitions, a less concrete form of manifestation, the people who have claimed to have seen or spoken to Mary or Jesus can be interviewed and psychologically tested.

In the case of Fatima, Portugal, where apparitions of Mary appeared to three children in the early 20th century, it took years for the site to be acknowledged as holy. The local bishop investigated and eventually declared what was happening as credible. Then the Vatican began to show the "first inclinations that Rome was aware of something good going on and began to speak positively about the place," said Mr. Donovan.

"A pope will eventually makes a reference to Our Lady of Fatima or preach about the message of the apparition and then it slowly becomes part of the language and the history of the Church.

A Marian apparition is an event in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed to have supernaturally appeared to one or more persons. They are often given names based on the town in which they were reported, or on the sobriquet which was given to Mary on the occasion of the apparition. They have been interpreted in religious terms as theophanies.

Marian apparitions sometimes are reported to recur at the same site over an extended period of time. In the majority of Marian apparitions only a few people report having witnessed the apparition. Exception to this include Zeitoun, and Assiut where thousands claimed to have seen her image over a period of time.

A Marian apparition, if deemed genuine by Church authority, is treated as private revelation that may emphasize some facet of the received public revelation for a specific purpose, but it can never add anything new to the deposit of faith. The Church will confirm an apparition as worthy of belief, but belief is never required by divine faith.

Vatican approval of apparitions seems to have followed general acceptance of a vision by well over a century in most cases. According to Father Salvatore M. Perrella of the Marianum Pontifical Institute in Rome, of the 295 reported apparitions studied by the Holy See through the centuries only 12 have been approved, the latest being the May 2008 approval of the 17th and 18th-century apparitions of Our Lady of Laus

An authentic apparition is believed not to be a subjective experience, but a real and objective intervention of divine power. The Vatican believes that the purpose of such apparitions is to recall and emphasize some aspect of the Christian message. The church states that cures and other miraculous events are not the purpose of Marian apparitions, but exist primarily to validate and draw attention to the message. Then what brings about the cures that afflicted people appear to have received?

According to the Christian New testament, Jesus made specific promises in the Bible about how prayer is supposed to work. Jesus is alleged to have said in many different places that he and God will answer everyone’s prayers. And Christians believe Jesus’ promise. As many as 54% of American adults believe the New testament is literally true. In some areas of the country the number goes as high as 75%. Obviously these people believe in the power of prayer.

What would happen if someone got down on his or her knees at Lourdes and prayed to God in this way:

“Dear God, almighty, all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe, I pray to you to cure every case of cancer on this planet tonight. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.”

Absolutely nothing will happen. Why will nothing happen? The question is easy to answer. Millions upon millions of people at the moment of their approaching deaths asked God, Jesus or Mary or all three of them to spare them and let them continue living and all of them died anyway.

Then is it possible that someone who is ill may be cured by prayer alone? My answer to that rhetorical question is a simple, “Yes it is possible.” But why (you may ask) is that possible?

A disorder that involves both mind and body is called a psychosomatic illness. In other words, the illness may be emotional or mental in origin but have physical symptoms. Psychosomatic illnesses are not imaginary. They are physical disorders in which both emotions and thought patterns are believed to play a central role, and usually develop when a person's disease-fighting ability is weakened due to stress. After a particularly stressful event, like the loss of a loved one, for example, an individual might develop high blood pressure shortly afterward or even have a heart attack. In another person, the same situation might lead to a peptic ulcer or a series of asthma attacks. A third individual, equally as grief-stricken, might not get sick at all. For a psychosomatic illness to occur, a person must first be vulnerable in a particular body system.

Prayer may very well help when the person afflicted believes in prayer. In other words, often the body has the means in which to heal itself but often like a car, it needs a jump start. The belief in prayer can be and often is the jump start that puts the person suffering from a psychosomatic illness on the road to recovery.
My comments to those who believe in the power of prayer; by all means pray. But don’t abandon medical help when it is available. To those who see apparitions, ask yourself this question, “Is it possible that my imagination is making it appear to me as an apparition when in fact, it is nothing but either my imagination getting the better or me or alternmatively, it is a hoax? Praying for help doesn't necessarily have to result in miraculous healing as long as it has changed someone’s life. When that occurs, then that truly is a miracle.

What follows are some of the hits and misses. Here's a rundown of some well-known sites, and some lesser-known frauds.

GRILLED CHEESE MARY, FLORIDA
In November 2004, a grilled cheese sandwich with the picture of the Virgin Mary was sold on eBay for US$28,000 to Golden Palace Casino, which had planned to take the sandwich on tour before selling it and giving the proceeds to charity. The original owner, Diane Duyser, made the grilled cheese, noticed the image and held onto it for 10 years before selling it to some fool.

OUR LADY OF MEDJUGORJ E , BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
"Our Lady of Medjugorje" is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary by those who believe that she has been appearing since June 1981 in the village of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The apparition appears to six local people and is to reveal to each 10 "secrets" that will occur on Earth. In March, the Vatican announced that it was forming an investigative commission.

OUR LADY FATIMA, PORTUGAL
Along with Lourdes, this is one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Christendom. Two of the chidren who saw the Virgin Mary were beatified. It has been acknowledged by the Catholic Church.

OUR LADY OF C I V I TAVECCHIA , ITALY
This small statue of the Blessed Virgin, which came from Medjugorje, has been the subject of a criminal probe over whether its tears of blood, shed in 1995, were real. Our Lady of the Fraudulent Tears of Blood, Italy. An Italian Catholic church custodian went on trial in Forli, Italy for committing religious fraud. He faked blood on a statue of the Virgin Mary, and his own DNA was eventually matched to the blood.

If you are so gullible as to accept those so-called miracles as genuine, then contact me because I have a bridge I want to sell you. It connects Manhatten with Brooklyn. It’s used but in can really be a big moneymaker if you make it into a toll bridge.