Lourdes

[Steve20]

My priest was talking about it alot last month. True or not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadette_Soubirous

 

PS. I'm kind of hoping there is no Christian God, getting sick of the guilt trip, etc.

[Shyone]

My priest was talking about it alot last month. True or not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadette_Soubirous

 

PS. I'm kind of hoping there is no Christian God, getting sick of the guilt trip, etc.

Let's see.

 

Did she have visions? Quite probably, although she could have been lying. Why would she lie about having visual hallucinations though?

 

Were the visions real? No, or the woman she saw would have been 1) real, 2) visible to others.

 

Was the vision what she thought it was? Virgin Mary? Or a Fairy? I suppose it depends on how your mind interprets its own imaginings.

 

Is she "incorruptible"? Looking into that, it seems that the poor girl has been cast in wax to preserve her features. You wouldn't really want to kiss her dead face.

 

The most famous of the Catholic incorruptibles is Saint Bernadette, currently on display at the Chapel of St. Bernadette in France. She died in 1879 and was exhumed thirty years later, so the story goes, and was discovered to be incorrupt and free of odor! However, two doctors swore a statement of their examination of the body, clearly describing a partially mummified corpse, describing the whole body as "shriveled", saying the lower parts of the body had turned black, the nose was "dilated and shrunken", and that the whole body was rigid and "sounded like cardboard when struck." The body was prepared and reburied in a sealed casket. When it was dug up again in 1919, another doctor filed the following report:

 

The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts... The skin has disappeared in some places, but it is still present on most parts of the body.

 

At her third and final exhumation in 1925, it was noted that the "blackish tinge to the face and the sunken eyes and nose would make an unpleasant impression on the public," and so the decision was made to display the corpse with a wax mask.

[ShallowByThyGame]

Uh, obviously not true stuff there. Just as lacking of evidence as the folks at Roswell.

 

You may wonder why everyone freaks out about it? Group delusion. People want it to be true, people want to conform to what others want, people want to feel that something special is going on...so they all pretend that miracles are occurring. This series explains how such hysteria could occur.

 

Truth requires hard evidence, and this sort of thing is completely lacking. It's just all hearsay and wishful thinking. And I wouldn't be surprised if the area promoted this also because visitors bring them commerce.

[Vomit Comet]

Uh, obviously not true stuff there. Just as lacking of evidence as the folks at Roswell.

 

The existence of space aliens is more plausible than the Christian God.

[Non-Redneck]

Uh, obviously not true stuff there. Just as lacking of evidence as the folks at Roswell.

 

The existence of space aliens is more plausible than the Christian God.

 

Maybe the Christian God is an alien with an extensive PR departments.

[Vomit Comet]

Maybe the Christian God is an alien with an extensive PR departments.

 

If so, he's really been fucking with us. What an asshole!

[YellowJacket]

OK, I read the article, maybe I'm missing something here, but WHY do they keep digging up this corpse? WTF? This is why I'm all for cremation. One buy-bull verse I believe in is "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" or is that even in the buy-bull? maybe Shakespeare or Chaucer, eh?

[Guest ephymeris]

I went to Lourdes as a teenager and it was such a shameful tourist trap. Every shop nearby sold gallon jugs in the shape of Mary that you could fill with the magic water at Lourdes and plastic rosaries. I was digusted by the commercialism of it all.