Posted on 03/23/2014 7:49:27 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
The Catholic belief of “incorruptibility” holds that if a body does not decay after death, the person is holy. It takes two miracles to become a saint; the Church once allowed a perfect corpse to count as one.
Incorruptibility is no longer a miracle, however, perhaps because so many tried to help God along. Oil and herbs were inserted into the muscle cavities of some older popes, for instance.
When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, the Vatican used a wrapping technique similar to what was believed to have been applied to Jesus. It failed miserably. Only days after his death, his nose fell off, and a Swiss Guard fainted due to the stench while he was guarding the body.
[SNIP]
In 2000, Pope John Paul II had [Pope John XXIII] exhumed to be declared “blessed,” part of the progression to sainthood. The airtight coffin had left him virtually undisturbed, and the embalming team wanted to keep it that way.
After the pope’s internal organs were removed and analyzed, the body was placed in a stainless-steel tub for several weeks in a solution of formalin and alcohol, then neutralized for several weeks.
His body then undertook a series of baths in assorted solutions for months at a time, including various mixtures of ethanol, methanol, phenol, camphor, nitrobenzene, turpentine and benzoic acid.
Finally the body was bandaged in linen cloths saturated with a solution of mercury bichloride and ethanol. Then a second team ensconced him with wax on his face and hands. The entire process took about a year.
The Church decided not to rebury Pope John XXIII, instead putting him on display for pilgrims. More than 25,000 people visit St. Peter’s Basilica every day, and many faithful still believe the incorrupt state of his body is a miracle.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
People who have been given ears to hear will hear the truth. If you can’t hear the truth then the video isn’t for you.
The a Testimony of a Former Catholic Priest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvID3lRyYIc&feature=relmfu
Here is a good paper on the topic written by the great 19th century Scottish theologian and historian, J.A. Wylie
The Papacy is the Antichrist
http://www.historicism.net/readingmaterials/thepapacy.pdf
Meanwhile, Genesis is mythology because “stuff like that just doesn’t happen.”
Good point!
Not I. What flummoxes me is the idea that some of the miracles G-d worked in the Bible "never really happened at all."
“I’d hate to get into a poker game with these miracle-seeking guys..”
I’d love it. They’d be constantly chasing straights and flushes. Lot’s of money to be made from people looking for miracles while you play the odds using math.
What are you talking about? I said nothing of the sort. I was talking about catholicism, not the Lord's work.
Since when?
And based on what Biblical reference??
I thought we were all made righteous, holy if you will, in God's eyes when we believe Christ died for our sins.
Rule #1: It must not be, cannot be true if it impugns Rome.
Rule #2: If rule 1 is not believed, then they are biased anti-Catholic and cannot be trusted.
The just shall live by faith, and looks unto Jesus by faith, which comes by hearing the incorruptible word of God which is alive to the regenerate, but the lost look to the corruptible flesh for security and comfort, and imaginary gods and goddesses (queen of heaven, etc.).
St. Teresa, who died in 1582, is an example of how obsessed earlier Catholics were with relics of the flesh. After her death, a priest cut off her left hand, from which he took a finger, wearing it around his neck for the rest of his life.
Shockingly, there is only one survivor from the original team, the others having died of various tumors and cancers, likely side effects of the toxic chemicals expended during their work. Nobody is currently willing to assume their task due to the peril.
Rent Free.
Matters not! </sarc>
Did you forget all the anti-Protestant postings by many on this site? I really do not understand their hatred of non-Catholics. It is like, I am right and everyone else is wrong and that attitude is wrong. If I were searching for the truth, I would be very confused by that attitude.
The Bible does note that there are more things that Jesus did, but what we have recorded we do so that we may believe.
As a result, there isn't a need for any additional revelation. We have everything we need regarding how to be saved by faith in Christ in the Bible.
We have what we need to conduct church services.
It's all in His Word, if we'll just read it.
Vatican officials indicated that the procedure involved the injection of a formaldehyde-based fluid, which falls short of a full embalming process.
Dr. Giovanni Arcudi, the head of forensic medicine at Rome's Tor Vergata University, confirmed that he had been summoned to the Vatican after the pope's death Saturday night to oversee the body's temporary preservation -- but said he had been sworn to secrecy about the details....
Dr. Gennaro Goglia, who was among those who prepared John XXIII's body for burial in 1963, was pleased upon the exhumation to see how well his work had held up.
So was the Vatican, which awarded him a medal.
Now in his 80s, Goglia recalled with reverence his abrupt summons to the papal apartment, where he worked late into the night, attended by prayerful clerics. He saved for posterity the scalpel he used. ------------------------------
THE INCORRUPTIBLES By Heather Pringle Discover Magazine, Vol. 22 No. 6, June 2001;http://www.nhne.com/misc/incorruptibles.html: Over the last 15 years, however, a new view of the Incorruptibles has begun to emerge. At the Vatican's request, Italian pathologists, chemists, and radiologists have been poring over the bodies of the ancient men and women interred in church reliquaries. Charged with gleaning new information about the lives of the saints and assisting in the conservation of sacred remains, they have also brought science to the altars of Europe's cathedrals. Already, they have examined more than two dozen saints and beati, shedding light on the mystery of their preservation. While some saints were clearly mummified by their devout followers, others were protected from decay by environmental conditions, raising new questions about incorruptibility. "What is a miracle?" asks Ezio Fulcheri, a pathologist at the University of Genoa and one of the leading researchers on the Incorruptibles. "It's something unexplainable, a special event that may occur in different ways." The causes may seem mysterious "but don't exclude [rare] natural processes that are different from the normal course of things."
The 20th-century Catholic Church had not hesitated in calling on science for help in preserving a future saint. That sparked Fulcheri to wonder whether it had made similar appeals in ages past...
Fulcheri came across his first clues when Nolli called on his help once again, this time with an official examination of an important 13th-century Tuscan saint, Margaret of Cortona. ...
As Fulcheri gently lifted the hem of her dress up over her legs, all those assembled began to murmur. Several long incisions streaked along her thighs; other, deeper cuts ran along her abdomen and chest. Clearly made after death, they had been sewn shut with a whipstitch in coarse black thread. Saint Margaret had been artificially mummified. -
It goes on and it quite interesting,.
do Catholics really believe this??
As usual in RC thinking of men above that which is written, the one (second part) is taken out of context, as it referred to the resurrection of Christ: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. (Psalms 16:10)
Agree.
Paul often greets the saints in his letters.
So these Catholic clergy then were faithless, superstitious barbarians...
This is all too gross for words...
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