AXES
CATHOLICISM,
THE “MIRACLE” OF INCORRUPTIBILITY
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The Catholic
Church reports the miracle of incorruptibility. This is when a picture or religious item
and most often the body of a holy person should have decayed away and
didn’t. This seems to be a testable
and permanent miracle. Or is it?
ST JANUARIUS
There is a
phial of what is supposed to be the dried blood of the martyr bishop
Januarius in
The
reliquary containing Januarius’ blood is always vigorously moved while
carried in procession and the excuse is for the blood to be seen running in
the vial. The times it fails to
liquefy are down to the relic not getting enough shaking. The Cardinal Michele Giordano who carried
the vial of Januarius and thereby effected the miracle is under suspicion of
involvement in loan sharking and blackmail.
Since the miracle is trickery and is uncommon one cannot blame any
scientist who thinks what is inside the phial is real blood for they can only
look at it. The Church won’t allow any
of the contents to be tested in a lab.
It is a
problem that the accounts of the origin of the relic all conflict (page 100, The
Book of Miracles). The power of
the blood to return to the state of fresh blood was unknown before 1389 (ibid
page 100). The bubbles in the blood
seen in 1970 by Dr Georgio Giorgi show that it is not real blood (ibid page
101). The weight changes in the blood have been recorded but consistency is
lacking indicating that this is bad measurement. The saint is masked in legend and no God
would do miracles for a saint like that.
He could have been a great sinner for all we know. It has been observed that the miracle is
absurd and it is hard to imagine a God wasting his time to do it (ibid, page
102).
The miracle
is only accepted by the Church because it pulls in the numbers. The miracle has failed to happen at times
when great disaster or war was thought to be around the corner so the miracle
has been a master at political manipulation.
The Church cannot recognise a miracle that does that.
INCORRUPTIBILITY
Certain
Catholic saints and blessed are alleged to have miraculously been preserved
after death for years.
The best book on the subject is Joan Carroll Cruz’s book, The Incorruptibles. The book however is credulous for it treats cases that can no longer be examined as authentic. However, she does tell us that some places that should not mummify corpses and preserve them actually do it despite all the odds (page 33). Nature has strange ways at times. Yet she – a layperson not an expert - says the saints’ preservation is miraculous for they don’t get hard and dry and stiff like natural mummies. Many of the corpses have a nice smell indicating that some kind of embalming fluid was used. St Philip Neri and St Charles Borromeo were found to have been embalmed (page 87, Looking for a Miracle). Autopsies have never been done to determine whether the likes of St Bernadette were embalmed. Many of the bodies get black and hard and some parts of them rot. The alleged miracle of incorruptibility is an affront to God for it attributes half-miracles to him. Sometimes God has to be even helped. The incorrupt body of St Angela Merici had to be treated for preservation in 1930. Cruz forgets that the bodies of saints were often treated with preservatives as soon as the saint died so that the body would be able to be kept for longer for public viewing before burial. Another reason why devotees wanted saint’s bodies to last longer was so that relics such as the heart and so on could be taken.
The body of St Zita (probably born 1212 - 27th April 1272) is
preserved. She was born in Italy. When she was about 12, she got
employment as a servant in the Fatinelli household. Her employers and
the other servants hated her for her hard work and kindness. They
constantly abused and maltreated her and gave her too much work to do.
She refused to stand up for herself and assert her rights. In time,
she was loved by the family. The pope canonised her in 1696.
Pope John
XXIII got treated with formalin and was in an airtight coffin that was made
of lead, zinc or both which help delay decomposition. That was why he was well preserved when he
was taken out of his tomb in March 2001 despite being dead for 37 years. The
The
Miraculous Medal visionary, St Catherine Laboure, has been considered to be
among the incorruptibles and her body is still on display today. Some Catholic sources say that St Catherine
Laboure was embalmed. I once saw a
book called Madonnas of Europe that made this
claim. Embalming could have been done
and forgotten about in a lot of cases.
In Catherine’s case, the hands completely rotted away and had to be
replaced by wax hands indicating that her preservation is no miracle and she
probably was embalmed. If you look at
the photos, which have not been retouched, of the corpse of Catherine Laboure
in the book, St Catherine Laboure and the Miraculous Medal you will
see she had a shrunken face and was very old looking. Yet the picture of her corpse has fresh
full features with eyes open and excellent skin and she looks like a woman of
35. Either the body is a wax figure put there by the crafty Catholic Church
or her body has disintegrated a bit and has had to be repaired with wax.
In 1961 in
In 1782, the body of Catherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII, was found in an amazing state of preservation for someone that had been 234 years dead. The skin on her arm was found to be as fresh and white as she was in life. Her coffin had been found by a man called John Locust who gave this testimony. He took some locks of her hair and buried her again. In 1817 nothing but a skeleton remained. Source wikipedia.
The Physical
Phenomena of Mysticism by Father Herbert Thurston page 254 relates an account
of an incorrupt body being found in a grave that was opened in a churchyard
that hadn’t been used in living memory.
The story was about a girl found incorrupt in
Because the
Catholic Church knows that the evil Cardinal Shuster who was once Archbishop
of Milan and was a support of Mussolini and his brand of fascism and who died
in 1954 was found incorrupt in the grave after 31 years, and Buddhist Monks
and yogis have also escaped decay for no known reason it is reluctant to see
incorruptibility as a sign from God.
It is lay Catholic fanatics and some priests who make a fuss about
incorruptibility being a sign from God.
The X Factor Issue 26 page 718 (Marshall Cavendish, 1997) contains
photos of people who were preserved for a long time after death. It displays the photograph of a child
called Rosalina Lombardo which was taken seventy years after her burial in
1920 and she is perfectly preserved.
The child never had any prospects of being a saint. The eyes and the eyelids are perfectly
preserved which is unusual though there is no doubt that the child was
embalmed. Embalming shouldn’t normally
enable the whole body to stay preserved.
But the method is a mystery and the doctor who did the embalming
didn’t leave any explanation behind him.
The magazine also reminds us that there is any number of ordinary
people who were not religious like saints whose bodies were untouched by
decay (page 717).
In China, mummies
with European features up to 4000 years old were found in the Tarim Basin
desert thirty years ago. They are so
well preserved and preserved much better than many incorrupt Catholic saints
who are mere centuries old that they look as if they are recently dead. Their clothes were remarkably preserved as
well. One mummy had an intact goose
feather in her hat.
ST BERNADETTE OF LOURDES
The best
known case of a saint’s body remaining without decay long after her or his
death is that of St Bernadette of
Everything You Know About God is Wrong, The Disinformation Guide to Religion, Edited by Russ Kick, The Disinformation Company, New York, 2007, page 167. She was supposedly found undecayed three hundred years after her death. Why God doesn't have saints dying at 100 and still looking like they were in their late teens is a question Catholics prefer to forget. The imperfection of the preservation miracles suggests that Satan is doing them for it is said he does trickery and his miracles are not outstanding like God's are. If so, then Satan then wants "saintly" beacons to draw people to shipwreck by faith in the Roman Church.
Bernadette
supposedly saw the Blessed Virgin Mary at
Bernadette
died in 1879. Thirty years later, her
coffin was taken out of the vault in which she had been entombed. The coffin was taken to a room and the body
was removed. Here’s what happened
according to the doctors speaking under oath.
"The
coffin was opened in the presence of the Bishop of Nevers, the mayor of the
town, his principal deputy, several canons and ourselves. We noticed no
smell. The body was clothed in the habit of Bernadette's order. The habit was
damp. Only the face, hands and forearms were uncovered."
"The
head was tilted to the left. The face was dull white. The skin clung to the
muscles and the muscles adhered to the bones. The eye sockets were covered by
the eyelids. The brows were flat on the skin and stuck to the arches above
the eyes. The lashes of the right eyelid were stuck to the skin. The nose was
dilated and shrunken. The mouth was open slightly and it could be seen that
the teeth were still in place. The hands, which were crossed on her breast,
were perfectly preserved, as were the nails. The hands still held a rusting rosary.
The veins on the forearms stood out."
"Like
the hands, the feet were wizened and the toenails were still intact (one of
them was torn off when the corpse was washed). When the habits had been
removed and the veil lifted from the head, the whole of the shrivelled body
could be seen, rigid and taut in every limb. It was found that the hair,
which had been cut short, was stuck to the head and still attached to the
skull, that the ears were in a state of perfect preservation, that the left
side of the body was slightly higher than the right from the hip up. The
stomach had caved in and was taut like the rest of the body. It sounded like
cardboard when struck. The left knee was not as large as the right. The ribs
protruded as did the muscles in the limbs."
"So
rigid was the body that it could be rolled over and back for washing. The
lower parts of the body had turned slightly black. This seems to have been
the result of the carbon of which quite large quantities were found in the
coffin."
“In witness
of which we have duly drawn up this present statement in which all is
truthfully recorded.”
Nevers,
September 22, 1909, Drs. Ch. David, A. Jourdan.
Extraordinary
as this is, the shrinking of the nose, hands, feet, stomach, the sticking of
the eyelashes, and above all the rigidity of the body show that there had to
be some natural cause. If it was
supernatural it wasn’t the work of God.
Curiously, the nuns who witnessed this noticed that her arms in the
coffin had moved from when she was buried and how the forearms came to be
bare when before they were covered in the sleeves of a habit has never been
explained. Some suspicious people
would think tampering took place and the body had been secretly treated to
preserve it. What all the carbon was
doing there – or was it really carbon? – is another question.
The body had
gained a lot of blackness in the hours in which it was exposed to the
air. This suggests that the
airtightness of the tomb had a role to play in protecting the body.
The Church finds
it strange that the decay of the body didn’t take place when the decay of the
rosary held by the corpse did especially when the habit it was buried in was
damp.
The 1919
report which followed another exhumation is more interesting.
"When the coffin was opened the body
appeared to be absolutely intact and odourless."
Doctor Talon
reported,: "There was no smell of putrefaction and none of those present
experienced any discomfort. The body is practically mummified, covered with
patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be
calcium salts. The skeleton is complete, and it was possible to carry the
body to a table without any trouble. The skin has disappeared in some places,
but it is still present on most parts of the body. Some of the veins are
still visible."
In the ten
years since the last exhumation, Bernadette’s body had obviously
deteriorated. And we must remember
that mummification is not a sign of miraculous activity. It is a sign of slowed down decay. A mummified body is a body that has decayed
well just like one might say that the well preserved Joan Collins has aged
well!
Doctor
Comte's report :
"At the
request of the Bishop of Nevers I detached and removed the rear section of
the fifth and sixth right ribs as relics; I noted that there was a resistant,
hard mass in the thorax, which was the liver covered by the diaphragm. I also
took a piece of the diaphragm and the liver beneath it as relics, and can
affirm that this organ was in a remarkable state of preservation. I also
removed the two patella bones to which the skin clung and which were covered
with more clinging calcium matter. Finally, I removed the muscle fragments
right and left from the outsides of the thighs. These muscles were also in a
very good state of preservation and did not seem to have putrefied at
all."
"From
this examination I conclude that the body of the Venerable Bernadette is
intact, the skeleton is complete, the muscles have atrophied, but are well
preserved; only the skin, which has shrivelled, seems to have suffered from
the effects of the damp in the coffin. It has taken on a grayish tinge and is
covered with patches of mildew and quite a large number of crystals and
calcium salts, but the body does not seem to have putrefied, nor has any
decomposition of the cadaver set in, although this would be expected and
normal after such a long period in a vault hollowed out of the earth."
Nevers,
April 3, 1919, Dr. Comte
This doesn’t
sound like a miracle but more like a mummified skeleton! We must remember that when Bernadette was
first buried she was buried in a lead coffin.
Like John XXIII, this would have helped to preserve the body. Since the body was preserved for so long
naturally, it hardened and hardened items last longer and the hardening
itself helps to preserve the body. In 1909, the body was buried in a new lead
coffin lined with white silk.
Bernadette
declared revulsion for all worldly things when she became a nun taking vows
of poverty. Would she agree with being
buried like somebody special in a lead coffin? Or getting special treatment.
The body of
St Bernadette has been on display in its glass case in Nevers since August 3,
1925. The face of Bernadette that
looks so natural is in fact a wax mask created by Pierre Imans in
Conclusion
When I was a
Catholic, the phenomenon of incorruptibility was one of the bedrocks of my
faith. Had I had the internet then to
research it would have been very different.
I would have been less impressed by the Church. The phenomenon is unusual but that isn’t
enough to make it a miracle or a sign from God.
BOOKS CONSULTED
Believing in
God, PJ McGrath,
Bernadette of
Everything You Know About God is Wrong, The Disinformation Guide to Religion, Edited by Russ Kick, The Disinformation Company, New York, 2007
Looking for a
Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books,
Miracles in Dispute,
Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM,
Miracles,
Ronald A Knox, Catholic Truth Society,
Mother
of Nations, Joan Ashton, Veritas,
Spiritual
Healing, Martin Daulby and Caroline Mathison, Geddes & Grosset, New
St Catherine
Laboure of the Miraculous Medal, Fr Joseph I Dirvin C.M., Tan,
The
Appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Grotto of Lourdes, JB Estrade,
Art & Book Company
The Book of
Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline,
The
Incorruptibles, Joan Carroll Cruz, Tan,
The Jesus Relics, From the Holy Grail to the Turin Shroud, Joe Nickell, The History Press, Gloucestershire, 2008
The Sceptical
Occultist, Terry White, Century,
The
Supernatural A-Z, James Randi, Headline Books,
The Wonder of
Guadalupe, Francis Johnson, Augustine,
THE WEB
Saints Preserve Us!
www.forteantimes.com/articles/159_saintspreserved.shtml
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified
Bible
23/06/08