CrAzY cAtHoLiC ReLiC StOrIeS...
Kilika:
Well, unless Herod let somebody take his head, along with his body, that ain't it. But it's no surprise this is tied to the RCC of the day.
"Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Matthew 11:11 (KJB)
Psalm 51:17:
7/25/12
http://news.yahoo.com/crowds-flock-virgin-miracle-tree-jersey-072636975.html
Fervent Catholics in a crime-ridden New Jersey town are flocking to what they say is the miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary's image in a tree trunk.
On Tuesday, a crowd of several dozen people stood around the tree, praying, taking photos and swapping stories of what they call a miracle.
West New York, just across the Hudson from Manhattan, has been better known for crime, a depressed economy and a mayor who along with his son faces federal computer hacking charges.
But the town's central Bergenline Avenue is now the unlikely setting for a diminutive Ginkgo biloba tree with a knot that, worshippers claim, has the form of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The Catholic Church has distanced itself from the supposed miracle and there's no shortage of scoffers in West New York, a tough place with a high Latin American immigrant population.
Yet on a sweltering summer's day, worshipers showed no sign of losing faith.
Boisterous and implacable, they vowed to stay put until the town's troubled mayor, Felix Roque, protects the tree for good.
"We want to build a monument," said Maria Baez, 35, one of the first to announce she'd seen the Virgin at the tree and now one of the stalwarts mounting day-and-night vigils.
Already the base of the tree and an adjacent fire hydrant are draped in rosaries, votive candles, flowers and pictures celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe, a major figure in Mexican Catholicism.
Police have erected a metal barricade around the tree and a patrol car is parked alongside to ensure safety for both crowd and tree. Roque has been quoted in the local press as saying that the town spends $1,000 a day to manage the situation.
According to Baez, the extraordinary chain of events began early on the morning of July 10, when a woman was traveling down the avenue to go to work.
"She saw a light and it was the Virgin. She went on to work, but she was frightened," Baez explained. The woman, named Carmen Lopez, tried to alert police and the mayor but received short shrift. Soon after, Baez says she experienced a similar vision.
"When I got here I saw her: she said 'I'm the Virgin,'" Baez recounted to a chorus of admiring "wows" from others gathered on the sidewalk by the tree. "I was speechless."
Since then, there've been no reported sightings of Jesus' mother herself, but the knot in the tree is said to bear an uncanny resemblance to famous pictures of the Guadalupe Virgin in her cloak.
The image is framed by an oval shaped split in the tree's bark and a dark coloring inside is said to match the shape of the cloaked figure.
Ruben Rafael, 49, recently retired from the US Navy, said this was his fifth visit to the tree.
"I was convinced," he said. "There's a lot of crime in this town. So this helps us Catholics, Christians. She's here to cure the pain in this town."
Not everyone is so believing.
Two men passing shook their heads, smiling dismissively.
"I respect every religion, but really I don't believe this at all," Ismael Garcia, a 27-year-old carpet salesman, said.
His friend, Giovanni Valenti, an assistant mechanic, 36, pointed at the parked police car and said "they should be spending this money on something else."
Valenti pointed out that many of the Ginkgo trees lining the street have splits in the bark and knots that could be imagined to represent some picture or another.
"Tons of these trees have it. It's normal for them in this climate. It's a law of physics," he said.
Standing by the tree, another man slyly pulled out a cellphone and showed a reporter a picture of a knot taken in a similar Ginkgo. The knot somewhat resembled a human face, complete with an angular nose.
But he was not ready reject the faithful crowd entirely.
"I'm a Catholic and I believe very much in the Virgin, but the picture in this knot is just a coincidence," Ed Venicio, 35, said.
"However, I believe that whether or not it's real, the important thing is that it motivates people's faith. It gets them to go back to church and remember that God exists."
more
Psalm 51:17:
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/29/17517272-shroud-of-turin-returns-to-spotlight-with-new-pope-new-app-new-debate?lite=
3/29/13
Shroud of Turin returns to spotlight with new pope, new app, new debate
The age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin is being resurrected this Easter — thanks to the attention of a new pope, the creation of a "Shroud 2.0" app, and a new book that claims the cloth dates back to Jesus' time.
The claim immediately faced a wave of criticism, including a harsh statement from Turin's archbishop that some say has driven a stake into the book's heart.
Believers say the centuries-old shroud bears the imprint of Jesus, chemically captured in the cloth at the time of his resurrection. Skeptics say it's a cleverly done medieval fake, wrapped up in highly debatable scientific claims that just won't die.
The newly published Italian-language book — "Il Mistero Della Sindone," or "The Mystery of the Shroud" — recycles some of those claims, adds in some fresh results from single-fiber tests, and makes the argument that the shroud shows the difficult-to-reproduce image of a man who lived sometime between 280 B.C. and the year 220.
If that's not enough to bring the shroud back into the spotlight, there's also the news that Pope Francis, who was named to lead the Roman Catholic Church just last month, will appear on Italian TV on Holy Saturday to introduce a RAI Uno TV appearance of the shroud. "It will be a message of intense spiritual scope, charged with positivity, which will help (people) never to lose hope," the Italian ANSA news agency quoted Turin Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia as saying.
And then there's Shroud 2.0, a free app for Apple's iPad/iPhone (and soon for Android) that lets users zoom in on high-definition images of the shroud and get factoids about its history. The app is being offered by Haltadefinizione, which took photos of the relic in 2008 and collaborated with church officials on the project. Shroud 2.0 is being offered as an "evangelization tool," according to the Vatican's News.va website.
Scientific links
The Catholic Church has taken no official stand on the authenticity of the shroud, which is kept under lock and key in Turin and is only rarely brought out for public display. But over the years, some researchers have tried to show that the shroud goes back to biblical times rather than to the 14th century.
"The Mystery of the Shroud" is the latest book of this genre. It was written by journalist Saverio Gaeta and Giulio Fanti, an engineering professor at the University of Padua. Fanti is part of a controversial research group that has claimed the image on the cloth couldn't possibly have been created by natural means. The new book refers to those past claims, plus a new angle.
That angle has to do with single fibers that were purportedly vacuumed up from the shroud during scientific testing. Fanti and his colleagues put the fibers through a series of mechanical and chemical tests. "Combining the two chemical methods with the mechanical one, it results [in] a mean date of 33 B.C., with an uncertainty of plus or minus 250 years at 95 percent confidence level, that is compatible with the period in which Jesus Christ lived in Palestine," the publishers say in a news release.
Skeptical views
Fanti's claims drew a quick reaction from Joe Nickell, a research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry who regularly counters claims from Fanti and other shroud researchers.
"As is typical of a religious rather than scientific agenda, their news was shrewdly released just in time for Easter," Nickell said in a blog posting. "That alone casts doubt on the claims, but there is more."
Nickell pointed out that Fanti's tests "involve three different procedures — each with its own problems — which are then averaged together to produce the result." He said that stands in contrast with 1988's mass spectrometry tests, which yielded a date range between 1260 and 1390. Fanti says those earlier tests were not "statistically reliable," but Nickell and most scientists are sticking with the verdict rendered in 1988.
As a professional skeptic, Nickell can be expected to voice doubt about the book. But criticism also came from Archbishop Nosiglia.
Because there's "no degree of security" as to the authenticity of the fiber samples, the shroud's custodians "cannot recognize any serious value to the results of these alleged experiments," Nosiglia said in a statement quoted by La Stampa's Vatican Insider. The archbishop's comments "put stakes into Fanti's work," Vatican Insider reported.
Somehow I suspect that shroud science is not truly dead, but what do you think? Feel free to weigh in with your own verdict in the comment section below.
Psalm 51:17:
http://www.webpronews.com/fabric-softener-jesus-goes-viral-after-laundry-mishap-2013-04
4/22/13
“Fabric Softener Jesus” Goes Viral After Laundry Mishap
“Fabric Softener Jesus” found his way onto a man’s shirt after a laundry mishap, and now the image has gone viral.
Martin Andrews says he was doing his laundry when he accidentally spilled fabric softener on a shirt. What happened next was a miracle. Sort of.
“I showed my mates at work the picture and one of them said, ‘I’ve heard you can find comfort in Jesus but you’ve found Jesus in Comfort!’” Andrews said.
The shirt was immediately transformed from a regular old piece of fabric to a cloth of divine intervention: Jesus Himself appeared in the fibers, and Andrews took a picture that has swept the web. It’s a bit blotchy, but Andrews and thousands of viewers have said they can definitely make out the shape of Jesus with his arms outstretched in a welcoming gesture.
No word yet on what Andrews plans to do with the shirt.
Mark:
Florida woman finds ‘sign from God’ on Goldfish cracker
It’s a fishy story, but the woman telling it believes it's pure gold. The Florida resident says the markings she found on a Goldfish cracker are a direct message affirming her Christian faith.
William Morris
“I believe that it’s a sign, a sign from God,” Patti Burke told Florida Today. “He is still in our life every day, and he wants to show that to his people.”
It's not quite manna, but in Burke's eyes it's a manifestation of her faith.
The cracker in question has two markings, or imperfections, on its surface. Burke says the first marking is of a cross with a circle around it. The second marking, near the head of the fish, represents a golden crown.
“When I picked this one up, I knew he was special,” she said. “Something I’ve never seen before out of all the Goldfish I’ve eaten.”
Burke admittedly has been working from a large sample size, consuming between two and three pounds of the crackers per week. She says she eats the small crackers individually, examining each one for the optimal amount of savory coating.
Burke now carries her special cracker in an earring box padded with gauze. But she wasn’t immediately convinced it was a sign from God. At first, she thought maybe she had won a special promotion from cracker manufacturer Pepperidge Farm.
“They called me back and said there’s no way this could have been printed like that in the factory,” Burke told Florida Today. “They said it sounds like something miraculous happened and we don’t know how it happened.”
(That comment has not been confirmed by Pepperidge Farm.)
No one can say exactly when people started seeing notable figures in their food, but it’s a phenomenon that has made headlines in the modern era. Last year, a Nebraska woman sold a Chicken McNugget on eBay for $8,100 after becoming convinced it contained the visage of George Washington.
After becoming convinced that the cracker in fact possessed a deeper, spiritual message, Burke brought her sign of faith to her pastor, D. Scott Worth.
“I think it’s a sign,” Worth told WKMG. “I think it points to, I would hesitate to call it a miracle, but I think it points to the miracle, which is Jesus Christ defeated death. And that’s what Easter is all about.”
Of course, not every piece of food contains divine inspiration. Just pray you don’t end up with a toaster possessed by the Devil.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/florida-woman-finds-sign-god-her-goldfish-cracker-191857159.html
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