I Examine a Cardiologist Examining Jesus
Right now I’m reading A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles by Dr. Franco Serafini. I have a habit of starting things and never finishing them so they sit as notes on my computer forever unpublished. So, I’m going to try publishing my notes as I go. Keep in mind that I haven’t done much research on any of this yet. These are just my notes on chapter 1: Lanciano (Eighth Century).
In his summary of the history, I noticed that he doesn’t give events in chronological order. So I put together a quick timeline of the dates he mentions:
(All dates are pulled straight from the book. I have not checked any of this information yet.)
Looking at the dates in this context, a few things jump out (beyond the 800 year gap between the claimed events and the first record of them):
- The first writings about the event appear less than a decade after the Council of Trent defined the dogma of transubstantiation, which is a suspicious coincidence.
- The 1886 examination of the specimens falls right in the middle of the period when the Franciscans had abandoned Lanciano and the convent was turned into a barracks. Where were the specimens kept during this time?
- The specimens were removed from the monstrance in 1574, but they weren’t put into a monstrance until 1713? This probably just means there were multiple monstrances – obviously they must have been stored in something before 1713. But it’s odd that he refers to both just as “the monstrance”.
The other interesting thing is that the bibliography does not include any of the ancient documents mentioned, including the “1631 manuscript – written in good-quality Italian”, from which he quotes extensively. Which makes me think he’s probably quoting from secondary sources. All of the sources in his bibliography are modern and seem unlikely to be impartial.
I’m hoping he gets into more detail on the scientific investigation later, so I’m not going to go into any detail now. The main thing that jumped out at me was the claim that the fourteen holes indicate that nails were used to “counteract the retraction and shrinkage of rigor mortis”, implying that the muscle was still alive at the time. This seems like a bizarre conclusion. First of all, it requires that in the hours after the miracle, someone noticed it was shrinking and reacted by grabbing a hammer and nails to stop it, which seems both unlikely and irreverent – I don’t think the Church would let someone drive nails through a normal consecrated host let alone one that seemed to be undergoing a miracle! Secondly, shrinkage would happen due to desecration, I don’t see how he came to the conclusion of rigor mortis.
Anyway, those are my first thoughts. I’ll hopefully come back to this soon.
So what did you think about the forensic claims regarding the argentine and Mexcian miracles?
I’d be curious as well!
Sorry I never replied JP, I’ve been busy. I’ve posted some stuff on Argentina here https://skeptasmic.com/eucharistic-miracles/
There’s a lot more I haven’t got around to posting, hopefully I’ll have more time in July/August.
For Mexico I haven’t found any forensic reports or detailed information. I haven’t done a thorough search yet, but I think there’s probably not enough information publicly available to get very far. For Tixtla the wafer was dry, so it’s not going to be Serratia, and it doesn’t look like Serratia either. I read somewhere it also turned brown with oxygen exposure, which would mean it behaved more like real blood.
There was a comment about how the blood spread in the wafer indicating that it came from the inside, I wanted to do some experiments to see if that’s true. So I got my husband to blot his blood on communion wafers every time he cut himself shaving. (He said the wafers stop the bleeding and work much better than toilet paper! But they’re not exactly sterile so it’s probably not a great idea). Anyway, I have a little stack of bloody wafers lying around somewhere but I haven’t found time to really look at them yet. Again, hopefully the summer will be less busy. I am working on it, it’s just really time consuming.
Hi, did you find more informations on Tixtla? I struggling with this one, especially the claim that they found active white blood cells after being store 90 days in a lab. Thank you for your insights.
Most of the information closest to the source on Tixtla is in Spanish, which I’m learning slowly. I hope to be able to read it by next summer, and be able to ask questions when I go to Buenas Aires after that.
Father Robert Spitzer does talks on eucharistic miracles if you want summaries of them, i think he covers tixtla (timestamped):
https://www.youtube.com/live/v4GVk8lFsO4?feature=shared&t=1628
he’s a bit of a story teller, passionately defends hosts that should have dissolve in water (which you have shown to not dissolve in water).
i think gomez is lead on tixtla. I don’t trust that guy since he has pretty terrible takes on Guadalupe. like saying that the stars on the gown (which is much a regular grid of stars) are of specific constellations (which is a literal case of “fitting your data to match your theory”). and seeing random shapes in the eyes, outlining them and saying see its the pope reflected in her eyes”. literally the same quality of analysis as seeing mary in morning toast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=R-Q7FMy71EQ&t=1167s
Yes Castanon Gomez seems to be the only source of information on Tixtla. I have thoughts on Guadalupe and Tixtla but I’m trying to stay focused on one project for now. Although my RCIA leader just sent me a video on Guadalupe so I might dive into that. I tracked down and purchased a couple of sources on Guadalupe that no one seems to have actually read, and they are very interesting. For example Callahan is often quoted, but he actually only believes a tiny portion of the image is original. The rest of the image (which includes the blue cape and the stars) he thinks was added or altered later, and he contrasts those areas with the part he thinks is authentic, describing the brush strokes and underpainting and pigments that youtube videos tend to say the image doesn’t have.
Here’s a comment I saved from a youtube comment section on guadalupe. forget the source. but it had some info in it for anyone looking to track down guadalupe for themselves. not claiming any of this is true but at least if it is true, it will give you some ideas of where to look.
“””
Let me begin with a clarification, I never claimed to be an expert on the subject of Our Lady of Guadalupe, or in the field of hagiography. As a scientist (chemist) I spent my career analyzing data such as scientific papers and patents, followed by writing my own publications and patents. In the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I decided to separate my personal research into two areas, first the Apparition story, and second the tilma (physical evidence).
I first read several publications on the Apparition story, and then systematically analyzed the many claims related to the event. My first research was concerned “The Silence of Zumárraga.” Claiming that for 17 years after the 1531 Apparition event, to his death, the key player, archbishop Zumárraga, made no mention of the event. You will find that this silence of Zumárraga is reported in many publications. However, as a scientist, I wondered about his successors. This led me to research the second archbishop of New Spain, Alonso de Montúfar; 1553 to 1572. This led me to the University of Lund in Sweden, and to E-mail Professor Magnus Lund who wrote is doctoral thesis on Montúfar. Again, the second archbishop had no knowledge of the 1531 Apparition. Actually, Montúfar thought that the chapel on Tepeyac Hill was dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura Spain. I spent a considerable amount of time researching Montúfar, and it is quite possible, that he commissioned the beautiful image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to be placed in the church in about 1555. Significant circumstantial evidence but no solid proof. Montúfar’s successor archbishop Contreras again reported no knowledge of the 1531 Apparition. It was interesting to find that 117 years after the Apparition date, in 1648, the priests in charge of the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe wrote a letter stating that they had no knowledge of the Apparition story. This letter is published in the second edition of the Sanchez 1648 seminal publication of the Apparition story. Side note: for 253 years after the claimed 1531 December Apparition, the yearly celebration in the chapel/church of Our Lady of Guadalupe was always held on September 8th.
Another example of my research involved the Infrared Photographic study of the tilma image by Dr. Phillip Callahan in 1979 at the basilica in Mexico City. There are several questionable claims being stated about this study. His 45-page report on the study is out of print, and I was unable to source it using various online lending libraries. Finally, I contacted the publisher, and for a nominal fee, they sent me a digital copy of Callahan’s entire report. Most Apparition sites claim that Dr. Callahan said that the original Image was made with one brush stroke. He never made that claim, he stated that the original Image showed no brush strokes, which was a technique known at that time involving thinned pigments, wide soft brushes, and sometime wetted canvas. It is continually mentioned that he worked for NASA, untrue.
One more example of my non-expert technique. While researching the claim that in the 10 years following the Apparition, 8 to 10 million Aztecs were baptized. I e-mailed a professor at the University of California who had written papers on early New Spain baptism practices. Her simple response based on her expertise was; untrue claim. I also found evidence that the Vatican was concerned about the large group/total village baptisms carried out by the Franciscan missionaries. This prompted the issue of a Papal Bull in June 1537, by Pope Paul III. The only copy I could find was in the National Archives in medieval Latin, and very hard to read for translation; I spent too much time trying. I contacted the professor in California, she could not help, but referred me to another professor at State University of New York in Albany. He kindly answered back quickly to inform me that the National Archives had mislabeled the title of this Papal Bull. He gave me the correct title, which enabled me to locate other clearer copies for translation.
I am sorry for my long answer. I just wanted to demonstrate some of the methods I used over a period of 18 months.
I am just a lifelong research scientist and teacher trained in reading, analyzing, and interpreting data. I would gladly supply you with my hypotheses on any aspect of the Apparition story and tilma of 1531.
“””
I’m more interested in the scientific claims than the historical ones, I think other people have pretty exhaustively shown the historical evidence is lacking.
I did get Callahan’s paper from the publisher. I can confirm that not only what you wrote above, but that Callahan concludes that the majority of the image, including most of the symbolic things people tend to go on about, were later sloppy editions by human hands. All of the gold including the stars on the mantle, the embroidery on the dress, the lower fold of the dress, the angel and the moon and substantial modifications to the hands he claims were done by sloppy humans. The only things he claims are miraculous are the pink and blue colours and the skin tone. For those specific pigments he didn’t see any underdrawing (but of course underdrawing is like a colouring sheet, if you have a line for the fur cuff, that same line is the underdrawing for the pink robe, right?), he doesn’t see brushstrokes (but as you mentioned that just means a different technique) and he can’t identify the pigment (he says Maya blue wouldn’t last that long, but there are plenty of contemporary works where the blue is the only pigment unfaded).
interesting. Its a quite a leap to go from no underdrawing to miracle. likewise for the blue pigment.
Yes, Callahan makes a lot of leaps from “I personally can’t explain this based on my experience as a painter and entomologist” to “this is inexplicable”. Then between whoever read his paper and the general public narrative there’s this huge leap from “a couple features of this painting are inexplicable but 90% of it is manmade, and pretty sloppily at that” to “the whole thing was miraculously laid down in a single brush stroke”.
Also, Stafford Poole is a catholic historian who studied guadalupe and he thought the apparition story was bogus. i think he wrote several book on it, you can check amazon or his wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Poole
I personally do not buy into any marian apparitions. the youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@Nontradicath
has stuff on various marian apparitions, including Guadalupe. you can search “marian” in his videos and find most of them i think. very interesting stuff.
interesting that the Vatican no longer will be doing scientific investigations into miracles (may 2024):
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2024/05/17/0403/00842.html#en
I personally find this document very revealing. tldr: unless its obviously a fraud at face value, dont need to verify it, as long as it bears fruit(strengthens or converts ppl to Catholicism), its allowed to be venerated (after editing/censoring any bad elements).
Reading through the whole document it seems, internally, they know that some passed investigations are bunk and to protect their reputation they will just avoid the science all together and focus solely on the pastoral value of the alleged miracles. granted, the pope can still kick off an investigation if he wants but i doubt it would ever be used and if it were it would likely be of the same quality as previous investigations.
It seems they recognize their current trajectory is unsustainable politically and this new approach allows them have the best of both worlds.
““supernatural” today might become a judgment of “not supernatural” years later—and precisely this has happened.”
“With the advent of modern means of communication, these phenomena can attract the attention of many believers or cause confusion among them. Since news of these events can spread very quickly, the pastors of the Church are responsible for handling these phenomena with care by recognizing their fruits, purifying them of negative elements, or warning the faithful about potential dangers arising from them.”
“with the development of modern means of communication and the increase in pilgrimages, these phenomena are taking on national and even global proportions, meaning that a decision made in one Diocese has consequences also elsewhere”
“….whether they need to be purified from problematic elements”
“Curatur – While various or significant critical elements are noted, at the same time, the phenomenon has already spread widely, and there are verifiable spiritual fruits connected to it. In this situation, a ban that could upset the People of God is not recommended. Nevertheless, the Diocesan Bishop is asked not to encourage this phenomenon but to seek out alternative expressions of devotion and possibly reorient its spiritual and pastoral aspects.”
“The Diocesan Bishop should exercise particular care, even using the means at his own disposal, to prevent the spread of confused religious manifestations or the dissemination of any materials pertaining to the alleged supernatural phenomenon (such as the weeping of sacred images; the sweating, bleeding, or mutation of consecrated hosts, etc.) to avoid fueling a sensationalistic climate”