The Case of The Weeping Madonna
Are the extraordinary events in a Virginia suburb a miracle or a hoax?
A young priest. Upswept brown hair. Mustache. A taste for RC Cola and pizza with green peppers. A hesitant Southern drawl. Nervous eyes. He is Exhibit A. Exhibit B is a 12-inch statue: a plaster reproduction of Our Lady of Grace, ordered from a mail-order religious supply house in Havertown, Pa. Her robes are blue, her face touched with pink. Her eyes gaze down in earthly contemplation, even as her arms open prayerfully for heavenly redemption of sinners. Long before the word "miracle," long before the TV newscasts and newspaper headlines and tour buses, there were the priest and the statue, neither of them particularly remarkable. Which makes all the more intriguing the events that started unfolding on Nov. 28, 1991, when, without warning, droplets of water welled in the eyes of the statue, slid down its plaster face and plunked onto an oak server in the living room of the priest's parents, Jim and Ann Bruse of Stafford, Va. Father, mother and son watched in puzzlement and awe.
That was how it began. Later--when Father Jim's hands and feet bled, when the 4-foot statue at the Lake Ridge, Va., parish wept in front of 500 people, when stories of unexplained "healings" and a sun that "spins" made whispered rounds among the Northern Virginia faithful--Channel 9 in nearby Washington, D.C., broke the story, publicly posing the question that more than a few had already dared ask in private: "Is it a miracle?"
Is it a miracle? Lake Ridge is only one American community where the question has preoccupied, baffled, inspired and even angered residents. In the past year, an enigmatic array of supernatural "sightings" has erupted across the United States: In Arizona, nine otherwise "normal" young adults say Mary, Jesus's mother, has visited and spoken to them; in Texas, an icon of Jesus reportedly wept; in a Denver suburb, a woman described visions of the Virgin wearing a "pink gown" in a mountainside shrine.
Whether these events indeed constitute divine intervention--much less what it means if they do--has created a kind of litmus-test controversy about the value of faith, instincts and science. Millions of Americans are of two minds about miracles. On the one hand, they want to believe in them (and a 1989 Gallup Poll found that 83 percent of Americans do) because such events suggest that God exists and our daily lives have a purpose. At the same time, people have a conflicting urge to dismiss miracles as fakes. To lend them credence seems to demonstrate naivete or ignorance. It is one thing to privately cheer on Kevin Costner when a disembodied voice tells him in "Field of Dreams," "If you build it, he will come." It is quite another to tell your boss that God spoke to you in the back yard about your real-estate plans.
The debate goes not just to the question of whether miracles exist but to how they have been used and abused. The religiously inspired maintain that events like those in Lake Ridge, Va., are proof that God is using his powers to call sinners back to him. Skeptics, including much of the press and the scientific community, consider the notion of miracles as nutty as Bigfoot or UFOs, a distraction for the gullible from the often frustrating realities of daily life. The fact that miracles, by their very nature, cannot be scientifically proved only perpetuates the debate. Even the Roman Catholic Church--which has recognized just 14 Virgin sightings and weeping statue episodes in the past two centuries--allows that, at some point, it's up to the believer to decide.
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