The Pope Lays the Smack Down

Well, tickle me Elmo, he’s actually following through with it. Early this year the Pope claimed he was going investigate Virgin Mary sightings and there would be hell to pay if they weren’t authentic. Turns out, the old man was serious. He just defrocked a priest in Bosnia that was apparently running a Virgin Mary scam to get pilgrims into his area.

From the article:

“In the midst of a spat with the local bishop and the Vatican, he had earlier made a prophecy that the Virgin Mary would appear in Bosnia.

Months later, six local children said they had seen the Virgin on a nearby hillside. Soon after Father Vlasic announced he was ‘spiritual adviser’ to the ‘visionaries’ who now claim that Our Lady has visited them 40,000 times over the last 28 years.

An estimated 30million pilgrims have visited the shrine since 1981, including many from Britain and Ireland.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, issued a ban on pilgrimages to the site but this has been widely ignored.”

Why don’t they apply these same rules to other tourist attractions? There’s that shroud that they tried to date, but then decided to hide then the dating didn’t go there way. And, there that piece of meat in a jar that some priests are claiming is a transubstantiated cracker. Millions of people pay to travel to see those relics, many of whom cannot afford to do so. Are some hoaxes immune from this sort of investigative rigor?

What's the deal with this cross. There looks like there's a piece of meat hanging on it. Is that to attract the Virgin Mary?

That Mitchell and Webb Look: Proof of No God

Holy Shit, It’s the “Virgin” Mary

Early this year, the Pope said, enough’s enough. He’s sick of all the Virgin Mary sightings showing up in toast, on griddles, in tree stumps …  he’s cracking down, damn it! Further claims of Mary sightings will be investigated fully by a team of “psychiatrists, psychologists, theologians and priests who will investigate the claims systematically”.

Well, will he put his money were his mouth is and investigate this one? The Virgin Mary had been spotted in a plop of bird shit (no word yet on what kind of bird it was, but I’m sure that species will be sanctified once they find out).

No matter how authoritarian the Pope wants to pretend to be, there is no stopping the superstitious. Listen to the news report in the link, they turn every little detail into some kind of stupendous miracle. The truck was usually in the garage, but they just happened to park in the the driveway on that day.He hadn’t visited his sister in a while but he just happened to go to see her that day. Truthfully, if these things are the miracles that people talk about, I guess my expectations have just been too high.

And, yes, they do plan on keeping the bird shit.