Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Monday ADD Irregulars, WSN Vagabonds, Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants, Lurkers, PHAM & Dawn Patrol, Triggeratti, Fascinating People and Bestie Bigots and Seekers of Sanity and Civility! (The Quarterlings generally don't get this post that I circulate at Rubin Report, Phetasy, Triggernometry, Tulsi and at Padre's.)

In Cath-O-land we are celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is another Marian feast day to the same person, The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, True God & True Man. Not all subscribe to such realities, so your interest in this post may vary. The long a short of such a celebration is a miraculous occurrence to an individual that is shared with the rest of the Church. There are various processes that vet occurrences of the miraculous and depending on the century and location were done with honest research or ignorant acceptance.

I do believe in miracles (que the song, you sexy thing) but I am ever a skeptic about such things. I prefer stories of martyrs and scholars rather than miracle workers, mystics or other occurrences of the supernatural. Remember the St. Nicholas post - I have questions about the dismembered children being reassembled and returned to life. Possible, sure. But I have a lot of questions and doubts. If you believe in a God who can create from nothing, a God who is all powerful, such a Divine Person is capable of doing anything. Miracles by nature break the rules of understood science or reality. I don't see them as a contradiction as much as an abstention of one's understanding of the experience. Some miracles are not miracles at all, but realities not properly understood. One can reasonably question reported miracles as an incomplete understanding of the science or realities of the experience. For those who are profound skeptics, there are no miracles just human ignorance, superstition and religious poppycock (such a fun word!).

Images like Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Shroud of Turin prompt questions and discussions. That such things are real is indisputable, but are the authentic? Are they examples of hoaxes and pranks for the imbecilic? I think not, but some think so. Even people of faith can have questions about such things. Every community has the freedom to say we believe and practice X and if you do, you are one of us, and if you don't, you aren't part of us. It often brings terrible divisions and reactions when such rifts develop, it is the story of broken humanity.

In the better chapters of humanity, individuals are free to decide if such miraculous things deepen their faith or unnecessarily complicate it, in worse days the powers compel and outliers are made to suffer. For myself, miraculous things like the Shroud and the Juan's Mantle invite me to humility of faith. The Mysterium Tremendem & Mysterium Fascinans acts in humble ways to keep me off-balance and questions things I want to take as a given. Blessed Feast day to all Disciples and Happy Monday to all of you.