When Statues Cry

Do we owe Mary an apology?

Apparition Hill, Bosnia, where apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary have been reported since 1981.

Though raised Catholic in my childhood and youth, as much as one could be by an Alcoholic mother, it never rooted in me. As a freshman in college I was swept up in Protestantism, which drove any remaining Catholic out of me. As a good Evangelical, I frowned upon any veneration of Mary other than the secondary role she occupied in the salvation story as the mother of Jesus. After all, God gets the credit for the immaculate conception, which qualified Mary to properly birth the Son of God.

The significance of Mary in the Catholic church is prominent. Growth of Roman Catholic veneration of Mary and Mariology has often come not from official declarations, but from Marian writings of the saints, popular devotion, and at times reported Marian apparitions. The Holy See approves only a select few as worthy of belief, the most recent being the 2008 approval of certain apparitions from 1665.

It hasn’t been the Vatican pushing the adoration of Mary on Catholics throughout the world. The people want Mary.

The subject of Mary came up for me this week with the recent news that the Vatican has lost control of her place in the church. There have always been claims of Mary appearing and speaking to people in apparitions, and reaching out to humankind in the tears of statues. Reports this week indicated that the Vatican has concerns that the veneration of Mary is being exploited.

Trouble In Vatican City

The Vatican is cracking down on purported religious or supernatural experiences. Turns out that holy hoaxes are on the rise. Last Friday the Vatican’s doctrinal office overhauled its process for evaluating alleged supernatural phenomena that have marked church history. The Catholic Church has had a long and controversial past of the faithful claiming to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, statues purportedly weeping tears of blood, and stigmata erupting on hands and feet mimicking the wounds of Christ.

According to the new norms, the local bishops will now investigate reports of supernatural phenomenon through a newly-created Investigatory Commission, made up of one theologian, one canonist and one expert on the specific occurrence. Their findings and judgment on each case are submitted for approval to the Vatican’s doctrinal office. The revised policy reframes the Catholic Church’s evaluation process by essentially taking off the table whether church authorities will declare a particular vision, stigmata or other seemingly divinely inspired event as “supernatural”.

In it’s place, if a particular miraculous experience or event passes the scrutiny of the Investigatory Commission, the church will issue a noncommittal doctrinal green light, a so-called “nihil obstat” (official Vatican approval). Such a declaration means there is nothing about the event that is contrary to the faith, and therefore Catholics can wholeheartedly embrace it. The norms still allow that an event might at some point be declared “supernatural” through the declaration of the pope. But “as a rule,” the church is no longer in the business of authenticating inexplicable events or making definitive decisions about their supernatural origin.

The stated reason for these latest decisive actions by the Vatican is, “It is important to provide clarity, because often alleged messages generate confusion, spread anxious apocalyptic scenarios or even accusations against the pope and the church.” Additionally, social media fraudulent and profiteering religious miracle scams have been on the rise.

The New Norms

The new norms document states several positive criteria to evaluate all alleged supernatural phenomenon, including:

1. “The credibility and good reputation of the persons who claim to be recipients of supernatural events or to be directly involved in them, as well as the reputation of the witnesses who have been heard. In particular, one should consider the mental equilibrium, honesty and moral uprightness, sincerity, humility, and habitual docility toward ecclesiastical authority, willingness to cooperate with it, and promotion of a spirit of authentic ecclesial communion;

2. The doctrinal orthodoxy of the phenomenon and any messages related to it;

3. The unpredictable nature of the phenomenon, by which it is evident that it is not the result of the initiative of the people involved;

4. The fruits of the Christian life, including a spirit of prayer, conversions, vocations to the priesthood and religious life, acts of charity, as well as sound devotion and abundant and constant spiritual fruits. The contribution of these fruits to the growth of ecclesial communion is to be evaluated.”

A description of criteria that might discredit the event, include:

1. “The possibility of a manifest error about the event;

2. Potential doctrinal errors. One must consider the possibility that the person claiming to be the recipient of the events of supernatural origin may have added—even unconsciously—purely human elements or some error of a natural order to a private revelation, not due to bad intentions, but to the subjective perception of the phenomenon;

3. A sectarian spirit that breeds division in the Church;

4. An overt pursuit of profit, power, fame, social recognition, or other personal interest closely linked to the event;

5. Gravely immoral actions committed by the subject or the subject’s followers at or around the time of the event;

6. Psychological alterations or psychopathic tendencies in the person that may have exerted an influence on the alleged supernatural event. Also, any psychosis, collective hysteria, and other elements traceable to a pathological context should be considered.”

The primary miraculous occurrences we are speaking of include;

• Marian Apparitions - a reported supernatural appearance by Mary the mother of Jesus.

• Weeping Mary Statues - a weeping statue of Mary, which has been claimed to have shed tears or to be weeping blood or oil by supernatural means.

• Stigmata - bodily wounds, scars and pain which appear in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ: the hands, wrists, feet, near the heart, the head (from the crown of thorns), and back (from carrying the cross and scourging).

I thought my work as a writer was difficult until I learned how complicated and arduous it is to grant approval of weeping statues. If you’re ever job hunting and see “Apparition Analyst Wanted” I encourage you to quickly keep on scrolling.

When Statues Cry

The Catholic Church is not quick to make a declaration about purported supernatural phenomena. I’m not sure which is more mysterious - the actual miraculous occurrences themselves or the official position of the Vatican about them. Case in point, the occurrence of Fatima, Portugal, where apparitions of Mary appeared to three children in 1917 and involved Mary imparting three secrets involving Hell, World War I and World War II, and 20th-century persecutions of Christians. Thirteen years after Mary’s final apparition at Fatima and despite disagreement on the meaning of the secrets, the Bishop of Leiria declared the visions of the three shepherd children “worthy of belief” and allowed the veneration of Our Lady of Fatima.

Catholics are known to have sworn devotion to Mary, and have historically been believers in weeping statues of Mary, as she is often depicted as carrying sorrow over the world’s sins and the pain she endured in her earthly life, known as “the seven sorrows of Mary”. It should be noted that it is primarily, perhaps exclusively, Catholics who report these experiences of weeping Madonna statutes. My guess is that members of First Baptist of Anywhere have never seen a Mary apparition or weeping stature.

Despite Catholic veneration of Mary, many weeping Mary statues have been exposed as frauds over the years. In such cases, the tears that the statue wept, be they water, blood or balsam, most commonly are traced to actions by the statue’s owner injecting liquids into the statue. If the statue is from a porous material, this is a very easy task. Tears of oil are particularly easy to recreate. The trick lies in rubbing oil mixed with fats on the statue’s eyes. When the temperature reaches a particular mark, the fat melts off, and the oil falls like tears. 

A recent video of a weeping Mary statue in Mexico has sparked an argument about its credibility.

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, Church officials quickly ordered tests that showed the blood belonged to a woman and then dismissed the case as a hoax.

Skeptics point to the fact that making a fake weeping statue is relatively easy. Because of such miracle tampering, the Vatican has only endorsed weeping statues in very rare cases. It’s difficult to pin down what weeping statue claims the Vatican has officially deemed credible. Most of them are still under investigation.

It seems that the only weeping Madonna officially accepted by the Vatican in this century occurred in 1953. A terra-cotta bust of the Virgin Mary in the home of Angelo and Antonia Giusto in Syracuse, Sicily began to weep tears on August 29, 1953, ending on September 1. The Catholic bishops of Sicily recognized the phenomenon on December 13, 1953.

Stigmata Stories

The 1977 picture above is Sister Susan Kuruvilla of India, showing her claimed stigmata

Though there are some non-Catholic reports of a stigmata occurrence, the most well known cases are predominantly Catholic. The suffering of Jesus on behalf of humankind, represented in his bodily pains and scars, is regarded as the foundation of the Catholic faith. Cases of stigmata are most strongly promoted by the Catholic church, regarded as one of the miracles associated with sainthood. The Church has canonized several people who apparently had these wounds, but the Church does not commit itself on their authenticity.

Stigmata claims have been controversial throughout Catholic history. Perhaps most notably, Italian friar and priest, Padre Pio, who was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, was later accused to have faked his stigmata. Apparently, he deliberately mutilated himself with acid to give the appearance of bearing the stigmata of Christ. These claims are made by Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto in his book, Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age. A few stigmata claims have been upheld by the Church. Most prominently, St. Francis of Assisi is said to have received the stigmata in 1224. Last month, Pope Francis joined celebrations of the 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi receiving the gift of the stigmata.

Many stigmatics have been exposed for using trickery. Magdalena de la Cruz was a Franciscan nun in Spain, who for many years was honored as a living saint, confessed before she died that her stigmata was deliberate deception. Some modern research has indicated stigmata are of hysterical origin or linked to dissociative identity disorder. There is a link between dietary constriction by self-starvation, dissociative mental states and self-mutilation, in the context of a religious belief.

I address the topic of supernaturalism in my previous article, Of Angels, Demons, Deities and Spirits: Exploring post-supernatural spirituality. The challenge and complexity of discussing the topic of the “supernatural” involves the fact that if a person’s starting point is disbelief in the supernatural they will likely not believe that any story involving a supernatural experience is credible. On the the other hand, people who have had experiences they describe as “supernatural” are unlikely to accept other explanations of their experience. It’s a dicey proposition to cast skepticism on the supernatural experiences others claim to have.

If an atheist and Catholic are sitting side by side in St. Peter's Basilica and a Mary statue appears to be miraculously shedding tears of blood, the atheist will doubt its legitimacy, while the Catholic may be having a deeply impactful spiritual experience. Who is right?

Let me ask you a question. If you were on a trip in Mexico and somehow found yourself in a crowd of people venerating a Mother Mary stature, and suddenly it appeared that tears of blood were streaming from her eyes, what would you think or conclude?

It seems the options are:

A. The crying Mary stature is a supernatural or miraculous experience

B. The crying Mary statue is a fraudulent act being deceitfully passed off as real

C. The crying Mary statue is an imagined spiritual experience in the mind and heart of the person, but not occurring factually

D. The crying Mary statue is a break with reality in the mind of the person and could be a symptom of psychosis

We know from the Vatican’s crackdown, that option ‘B’ happens. There is also plenty of evidence that there is religious psychosis or religious delusions, making option ‘D’ possible. That leaves options ‘A’ and ‘C’. For the person who doesn’t believe in the supernatural, option ‘A’ would not be on the table, and other explanations for the crying statute would be offered. Option ‘C’ probably wouldn’t sit well with people who claim to have experienced the weeping Mary statue, because it ends up coming off sounding something like, “it’s all in your head”.

Hmmm. There seems to be no great resolution here on how to resolve the weeping statue quandary and everyone be happy with the answer.

Phenomenology of Religion

There are countless things we could study in order to understand them better. I could study all the components, processes and technology in my laptop in order to understand what exactly is happening in there, which is allowing me right now to write this article. This knowledge might particularly be helpful if I wanted to become a computer repair technician.

Phenomenology is the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. It seeks to understand the fundamental components and processes of our first-hand subjective experiences of the world. When we experience anything - say enjoying a cup of coffee - what exactly does that experience involve at the most fundamental level? Is there an underlying structure to all human experience? Phenomenology examines the architecture of our subjective experience of the world? This includes how are subjective experience is bound up with the language we use about it.

Phenomenology of Religion, therefore, studies the nature of religious experiences. It holds that religion is a unique human phenomenon that deserves its own area of examination. The study of religious experience includes studying the subjective views and experiences of the religious people who have these experiences.

As a reminder, “religion” is not only something that people practice; it’s a phenomenon that people study like a Marine Biologist would ocean organisms or a Civil Engineer would study infrastructure design and construction. This fact alone can be discomforting for people who might say that religion is a matter of faith and profoundly personal, and should not be approached through scientific study.

The study of religion, typically falls under the rubric of Religious Studies, which is the scientific study of religion.

This area of investigation incorporates other fields of study such as:

• Anthropology of Religion - the study of the evolution of religion in our Homo sapiens species. I previously wrote a three-part series on this subject titled, The Evolution of Religion.

• Psychology of religion - an area within general scientific psychology that aims to understand the processes that mediate human religiousness in all its variations.

• Sociology of religion - a subdiscipline of sociology, focusing on the interactions between religion and different aspects of society.

We could turn the Religious Studies lens upon the claims of Mary apparitions, weeping statues and stigmata to investigate and understand more about them. In my opinion, using this lens to deconstruct and better understand religion, even if you are a devoted practitioner of religion, can be instructive and liberating, even if it is unsettling.

A few books that might be useful toward this end are:

• The Phenomenology of Religious Life by Martin Heidegger

• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett

• God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou

• Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung

• The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

• Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

• The Believing Brain By Michael Shermer

• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

• Waking Up by Sam Harris

• Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche

• A History of God by Karen Armstrong

For a Catholic to believe in an occurrence of a weeping Mary statue, they would at least have to believe:

• There was a historical Mary who was impregnated by God to be the mother of the historical Jesus who is the Son of God, and who after completing the course of her earthly life, assumed a body and soul in heavenly glory and is now the “Queen of Heaven”.

• That the eternal Mary in Heaven still grieves the death of her son Jesus and other earthly sorrows, and gives expression to these sorrows through supernatural and miraculous tears of anguish through statues.

• A three-dimensional plaster object is capable of miraculously producing or mediating authentic human tears from a person in the afterlife.

If you are someone who doesn’t believe in any of the above three items, you are not likely to find weeping Mary statues as real or credible. Right? If a person doesn’t hold a belief in Christian theism, Catholic Mariology or the supernatural occurrence of miraculous statue tears, you will likely write off these weeping statue claims.

As you know, a significant part of my professional work is counseling people through faith transitions, which can include an existential crisis, losing faith, and leaving religion. Catholics who are in the process of religious deconstruction often struggle with what to do about Mary. I recently wrote a post on the do’s and don’ts of religious deconstruction. People often leave Christianity and maintain a spiritual interest in Jesus, and the same could be true of Mary.

Mary is Missing

Even as someone who cannot accept Catholic Mariology, I might have written off the legend of Mary too hastily. In my book, Inner Anarchy, I share a few things I learned about Mary beyond my Evangelical prejudices. In Inner Anarchy, I wrote:

“Mary is not the delicate and submissive maiden we often see portrayed on Christmas cards. The New Testament name for the mother of Jesus is “Mary”, which is traced back to the Hebrew word "Miriam". There is some debate about the etymology of this word, but the realm of possibility includes “sea of sorrow”, and “incensed rebellion”.

There are two things we know about the legend of Jesus - he carried the suffering of the world deep in his heart of love, and he singlehandedly staged an epic revolt against the toxic religious establishment of his day.

Jesus get’s all the credit for this. But where do you think he got them?

Mary.

Jesus was born from that “sea of sorrow” and “incensed rebellion”, which was Mary. No Mary, no Jesus. Any other mother and we might not have ever had a “Jesus”.

Mary is the fitting mother for the path forward - compassion and resistance. We carry a sea of sorrow within ourselves for the suffering of the world, and we long for the liberation of the entire human family. But we also resist. We defy the separation theology of the Christian church and we refuse to accept their white “Jesus”.

Mary is not significant because she happened to be the woman God chose as the birthing mother of Jesus. Rather, this first-century Jew in ancient Palestine became “Jesus” because Mary was in him. Or perhaps a better way to say it is, the apple never falls far from the tree.

It’s a popular biblical hermeneutic to read or interpret the entirety of the Bible through the lens of Jesus. I wonder why no one has ever thought about reading and interpreting the Bible through the lens of Mary - through compassion and resistance, sea of sorrow and incensed rebellion.

Interpreting the Bible through Mary means that the question we are always asking is, how does this story deepen my compassionate solidarity with the suffering of the world, and how does it challenge me to confront the lies and falsehoods at the root of it, for the liberation of all humankind.

For many years as an Evangelical pastor I taught people the necessity of asking Jesus into their heart. But I wonder now if I should have told people the significance of holding space for Mary.

I decided to write her a letter. An apology.

Mary, it’s with great sadness in my heart that I say I’m sorry.

I’m sorry you were born and raised in a time and place when your worth and status as a woman was degraded.

I’m sorry you were the object of judgement, harassment, and condemnation for giving birth out of wedlock.

I’m sorry you were left to fend for yourself and raise your children as a single mom in great struggle and hardship.

I'm sorry your son was unjustly brutalized and taken from you, and the heartache, sadness and sorrow you carried in your heart.

I’m sorry your story was never truly told and honored, but twisted into a narrative to serve a religion of men.

I’m sorry that the truth of who you really were - the little girl from days long past, the extraordinary woman you became, your sacrifices as a mother, the life you lived, the wounds and trauma you endured, the love you gave... never made it into the written record.

I’m sorry that religion took your son from you, and made him into something other than who you know him to really be.

I’m sorry for how unjustly you were treated throughout your life and in your death.

I’m so sorry, Mary. Please find it in your loving, caring and forbearing heart to forgive us. We knew not what we did.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you for all that you are, all that you did, all that you mean, and the goodness, beauty, courage, compassion, tenderness, strength and love you gave this world. Religion told me to invite Jesus into my heart, but Jesus taught me to carry you there. And so it is. That's where you will be.

I will hold you in my heart, Mary.

I’ll be honest with you. I’m by nature a skeptic. I don’t think I can bring myself to believe in apparitions of Mary and crying statues. But I don’t think I’ll ever see a statue of Mary the same again. Even after I deconstruct all the Mariology away… I’m still standing there feeling like my life and the world would be better if we stopped arguing about statues and started being a little more like Mary.

In Summary

• The Vatican has a crying Mary statue fiasco on its hands.

• The field of Religious Studies is a great religious deconstruction lens, but be careful what you ask for.

• For over 2,000 years, Mary has been theologized, dismissed, exploited and misunderstood, and we might owe her an apology.

• What if we stopped arguing about statues and started being a little more like Mary.

“The mystery of the Incarnation is very simply that of God’s asking a woman freely to give Him a human nature.”
- Fulton J. Sheen, The World's First Love: Mary, Mother of God