One of the priests in the Zeitoun Church made a simple comparison between Fatima and Zeitoun and said that the appearance of the Virgin in Zeitoun did not feature any speech, so that people would not believe it was specific to the Coptic Orthodox Church, but instead for all
Bearing in mind that some bishops of the Church have previously declared that the Virgin did not truly appear except in Egypt, indicating the correctness of our Church specifically. And when a book containing non-Orthodox apparitions, such as Fatima and Lourdes, was presented to the Patriarch of the Church, he objected that the book includes non-Orthodox miracles, and one cannot guarantee their authenticity
He did not contest their authenticity; rather, his point was that the primary sources addressing them, which would allow for a judgment on their validity, are inaccessible and difficult for them to reach. Consequently, they cannot verify their authenticity. This seems somewhat true. In reality, Fatima, for instance, is well-known among the Shia as an apparition of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, who allegedly spoke to them and informed them of her identity. This narrative is more widely known than the original story
I don’t think you’re correct about that, we have the memoirs of the seers along with lots of primary source documentation. I’m not aware of this Shia tradition, can you link me to it?
I think he means it’s because of the language barrier and the ability to access original sources, unlike Zeitoun for them. This is the most famous Shia version:
I don’t think that’s really an issue. We have English translations of her memoirs that were published in 1976 and 2000, we have the original letters sent from the bishop to the pope on the secrets, and so much more that’s been documented. If there’s one thing you can’t accuse the church of (not saying you are) it’s failing to document our miracles.
As I mentioned, he didn't explicitly state the reason for their inability to guarantee the authenticity of non-Orthodox miracles. However, I think he means that general sources-such as press reports, writings,all eyewitness testimonies, etc.are easily accessible to them without any language barrier or difficulty in sourcing when it comes to Zeitoun, unlike Fatima and Lourdes. And yes, there was an issue with the link, try this one
I heavily disagree. I think those marian apparitions easily prove the veracity of the coptic orthodox church.
First of all, she appeared on top of the coptic orthodox church buildings. I don't think there has ever been any apparition outside the coptic orthodox church in which Mary appeared on top of. For me, it seems very weird that Mary would appear on top of a religious building that's construed as heretical. Just from the mere fact of her appearing on top of the church building I think seems to be approval of the teachings that church building upholds. It doesn't make sense that Mary would appear on top of a mosque where everyone would go there and take her blessings. Likewise, it doesn't make sense that Mary would appear on top of an arian church for people to get blessings from her giving the impression to the gatherers of her approval of that church. In the same logic, it wouldn't make sense for Mary to appear on top of the coptic church (that from the catholic perspective teaches heretical teachings like monophysitism). Now if you want to argue that the coptic church is a sister church to the catholic church and not necessarily heretical then that would be a doctrinal development from the catholic church that strays away from what the Church Fathers in the early church clearly taught, which alone by itself disprove the truthfulness of the catholic church. The mere fact that she appeared on top of the coptic church has to at least make the coptic church a true church among many (if that's what you believe which again I think is not the teaching of the early church) and from that perspective why don't you just then become coptic orthodox out of pascale's wager as the coptic church does not teach that the catholic church is the true church or has salvation (even though some catholics can attain grace and salvation through invincible ignorance) or that there exists sister churches outside of the Oriental Orthodox communion.
Second of all, there is a catholic church a couple of blocks away from the coptic church, in which Mary appeared on top of in Zeitoun. Many coptic theologians meditated on this fact as to why if the catholic church is the true church didn't she appear on top of the catholic church in zeitoun just a couple of blocks away from the coptic church building she appeared on top of? The same people from all different faiths who visited the coptic church in zeitoun when Mary appeared on top of it would have been the same exact people (copts, catholics, protestants, muslims, atheists, etc.) that would have visited the catholic church just down the road. Not even once in those three years did she appear on top of the catholic church that's very close to the coptic church in zeitoun. I think that deserves for us to take a pause and wonder why that's the case. Seems to vindicate coptic orthodoxy here.
Finally, some would argue that the Fatima apparition cuts the other way. If Rome is the true church, and the copts are in error, then surely it would be more important for Mary to speak to the copts and encourage them to submit to the Roman Pontiff? The Catholics already have the right theology, so why take the time to affirm it? It’s the copts who require explicit theological instruction. By remaining silent, she seems to be signing off on Coptic Christianity.
I can easily respond to all three of these, by just pointing out how you’ve failed to respond to any of the points that I put forward in the article.
Your first point and second points are refuted by the political context of the time, as I showed in the article. I also recommend you look at my article “On the Vindicatory Nature of Catholic Miracles.” In there, I provide ways a miracle can be vindicatory. Appearing on top of a specific Church is not a sufficient criteria for determining vindicatory intent. The goal of the apparition is very clear: a public miracle that reduces sectarian conflict against the Coptics. This is shown in exactly how the miracle played out. Muslims and Christians both thought this was completely consistent with their worldview, and were briefly unified, the violence was quelled. The apparition gives no doctrinal message. Compare that with Fatima. In Fatima, the seers, who are very concerned with the mass conversion of Russia from Eastern Orthodoxy to Catholicism, are vindicated in a massive miracle that converts thousands of skeptics.
This brings us to your third point. You ask why Mary did not tell the Coptics that the Catholic Church was the true church. That actually cuts against your miracle having vindicatory content, since she said no such thing to the Muslims who witnessed the miracle en masse. I pointed this out in the article, I encourage you to read it more carefully. And once again, I can point to a Marian apparition with insanely good evidence that DOES vindicate Catholicism over orthodoxy.
I don't think the vindicatory criteria are being evenly applied. Eucharistic miracles and stigmata have been called vindicatory, but they don't have explicit statements, and I don't think they are clearly more Catholic specific than Mary appearing three times over Coptic churches — to my knowledge, Mary has *only* appeared over Coptic churches, and these are three of the strongest miracles. Plus, as you've argued here, these miracles bring peace, something that is universally accepted as a good fruit, whereas there's a 50/50 chance that the angel that appeared at Fatima killed two children with the chalice of blood. As far as young children dying being a good fruit, that is controversial, to say the least. If the bar is raised to explicit statements made by apparitions, then it seems the Catholic miracle argument rests on Lourdes and Fatima (unless there are other examples I don't know about).
The alternative to this would be the "speaking while miraculous" argument, in which it's argued that if someone is able to perform miracles and then teaches a Catholic doctrine, that serves as vindicatory evidence (St. Pio is the poster child of this). This argument doesn't quite work because if you take St. Pio as an example, earlier in life, he taught massa damnata, but as he grew older, he switched to believing that very few people go to hell. So we end up with contradictory stances being vindicated. And this would also seem to require a new "saintly infallibility"doctrine. Also, this argument would apply to miracle workers in other religions, some of whom have very strong cases, arguably eclipsing St. Pio's, and teach doctrines that are decidedly not Catholic.
So if we list out the evidence for each side, I see it like this:
Catholic side:
-Two apparitions that gave explicit doctrinal statements. One apparition led to the death and torture of two children, the other led to miraculous healings over many years, but the rate of healings doesn't seem to be any higher than the rate of spontaneous remission.
Coptic side:
-Three apparitions, the most public and well-documented miracles in history, imo (we have photos of the apparitions themselves, which is far better evidence than Fatima or Lourdes). They are the only apparitions to appear over a church. They immediately led to the peace and well-being of many.
The number of conversions from each is an empirical question, and we don't have data for that. I can say at least for myself, that Fatima has actually basically become evidence against Catholicism for me the more I've looked into it, whereas Zeitoun remains solid evidence for some type of Christianity.
1. I think your claim about the children being killed by the chalice of blood is totally bunk. There is nothing in the apparitions to indicate this. It is true that, as least as Lucia recounts it, she only partook of the Host while Jacinta and Francisco partook of the Blood. However, on Catholic theology this is a meaningless distinction. We believe that every act of communion participates in the body and blood of Christ, so they all received the same thing in substance. It is correct that the Virgin Mary told them that Jacinta and Francisco would die young, but this is not said in some demonic way, rather it is said as "I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon. But you are to stay here some time longer. Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved." What does "take" mean? Well it clearly means bringing them to heaven. Under our theology, this is HIGHLY PREFERABLE to being alive on earth.
2. Identifying the sacrifices of the children as “torture” is extremely loaded language. They were within the age of reason, capable of making their own decisions about what penances they offered for each other. They did so with resolve. You’ve left out the part where the Virgin explicitly commands them not to use the rope at night, which seems like unequivocal evidence against this being “torture.”
3. I am not certain that the rates of healings are the same as the rates of spontaneous remission. Do you mean spontaneous remission for the illnesses that these people are being healed from, or for illness in general? This also seems obviously false for healings of blindness, paralysis, and other ailments that do not remit. It is also incredibly striking probabilistically that these miracles are occurring at the moment these people pray a novena at Fatima, get in water, etc. Spontaneous remission being consistently tied to Fatima is itself miraculous.
4. I’ll need your sources for that claim that Pio developed his teaching on hell. As far as I can tell, there is one quote where he indicates many people have conversion in the last moments of death, but he also consistently affirmed hell for non-Catholics, see Muse’s post about what Pio said in confession. Either way, the existence of that quote doesn’t seem to indicate change, and I can’t even find dating for it.
5. Our argument is not that Pio had infallibility. Our argument is that Pio 1) worked a great number of naturally inexplicable miracles that were 2) clearly tied to the true God and Jesus Christ which offered him 3) high levels of spiritual insight via visions and 4) that those miracles (such as mind reading) were specifically going on when Pio was teaching the necessity of being Catholic. Even if you dispute 4), the fact that Pio seemingly had extreme spiritual insight about heaven, hell, and purgatory indicates that we should heed his judgment about how we get there. As far as I’m aware, I don’t know of any “contradictions” from Pio when 4) was going on.
6. Am I applying vindicatory criteria evenly? In my view, there are two ways miracles can be vindicatory. As a matter of demonstration, when that miracle is tied to a clear message (which claims to speak in the name of the Lord). As a matter of probabilistic judgment, in which certain miracles are restricted to a religion. Miracles can be of the first and second category. To me, Zeitoun/Assuit/Warraq all affirm the message of some sort of afterlife and the importance of the Virgin Mary. They might probabilistically weigh on the Coptic Church being true, but only before one gets a full look at the evidence. Our Lady of Knock seems like a clear counterexample, and I’m hoping to do more investigation into other miracles with doctrinal content (so I’ll get back to you on that). As a more general counterexample, I am not aware of any scientifically verified Eucharistic miracles in the Coptic Church. Sure, the Copts affirm real presence theology, but we also affirm the importance of Mary.
7. I’m not totally certain Zeitoun is specific evidence for Christianity. I am really struck by the fact that many Muslims saw this apparition as completely consistent with their faith. Now maybe they have something to reconcile in the fact that this happened over a Church, but it’s not obvious to me and it seems like they could appeal to some of the principles I laid out.
1. There is only no distinction if you assume that this was actually an angel of God giving communion and not a deceptive entity giving them something else. We know that entities can appear as Christ and Mary given that the Church has rejected the authenticity of some apparitions of Christ and Mary. So an apparition of communion doesn't guarantee it's actually communion, and in that case, the equivalence between the drink and wafer doesn't hold, as we don't know that they are actually the body and blood. Keep in mind I qualified this by saying there is a 50/50 chance (either the blood killed them or it indicated that they were the ones to die), and I said that the goodness of child death is controversial. You can of course make an argument that it's good for children to die because they will be taken to heaven. This is very common in Islam during war. However, you then need to affirm the implications of this: Baptized children have a better chance at going to heaven in general because of the way age factors into mortal sin, so if it's good for the two children to die and go to heaven, then the same would apply to a great many Catholic children. In other words, there's the basis for an argument here that it would be good for more Catholic children to die. I think you would likely not agree that more dead Catholic children is better than fewer, and so I don't think it's fair to extend that to Fatima.
2. The children were 7, 9, and 10, unless I'm mistaken. That's not even middle school age. The youngest was only just past the age of childhood amnesia and was only two years out of kindergarten. I do not agree they were in the "age of reason". There is a reason that young children cannot make decisions about things like their medical treatment, schooling, etc. They were given practices meant to inflict significant pain on themselves by an authority figure, and Jacinta underwent surgery to remove two of her ribs without anesthesia while already suffering greatyl from influenza (hard to describe this as anything other than torturous) as part of this practice of offering suffering. This is probably pain around the level of crucifixion. She did this at 10 years old. If a teacher at an elementary school told children "if you hurt yourselves with this rope, I'll give you extra credit, but don't wear it at night", that teacher might be arrested for child abuse if any children went through with it. If a college professor did the same to their 18-year-old students, that would be very different (likely no criminal case, but I'd imagine they might be fired). No one would argue that the elementary school students were old enough to decide this matter on their own, and no one would argue that a teacher who got their students to undergo surgery without anesthesia did anything remotely acceptable.
3. This is something I've seen in passing a few times when doing some research with LLMs, I can't stand by it too much, so take that part with a grain of salt. But it's come up enough times that I don't think it's a hallucination. My take is that some of the new research on predictive processing indicates that a lot of these miraculous cures could be due to psychological factors. Too much to go into here, but PP indicates that belief can have a huge impact on functional disease, and there is one case of someone who was blind being cured due to a strong belief in her doctor, who convinced her she could see. So if someone has a disease with a psychosomatic component (which could be much more prevalent than we realize — see my post on St. Pio and psychogenic wounds to see how psychological states can potentially manifest in physical ways) and has a strong belief in Catholicism, then the implicit belief that they are cured could be enough to cure them in a framework like this.
4. Arthur T is the one who told me about these quotes. He found them in "The Friar of San Giovanni: Tales of Padre Pio" by John McCaffery and paralleled in Bernard Ruffin's biography of him. Here is the quote from the former:
'As he grew older, Padre Pio seemed to soften his theology. "I believe that not
a great number of souls go to hell," he remarked. "God loves us so much. He
formed us in His image. God the Son marshalled died to redeem us. He loves us
beyond understanding. And it is my belief that even when we have passed from
the consciousness of this world, when we appear to be dead, God, before He
judges us, will give us a chance to see and understand what sin really is. And if
we understand it properly, how could we fail to repent?"'
And from the latter:
"Terrible indeed! And yet, and yet, I believe that not a great
number of souls go to hell. God loves us so much. He formed us
in His image. God's Son marshalled to redeem us. He loves
us beyond understanding. And it is my belief that even when we
have passed from the consciousness of this world, when we ap-
pear to be dead, God, before He judges us, will give us a chance
to see and understand what sin really is. And if we understand it
properly, how could we fail to repent?"
5. I don't know the examples you're referring to in regards to (4). My point is that I can say the same about other spiritual adepts, even in non-Christian religions, who taught their doctrines (some of which directly contradict Catholicism) while performing miracles.
6. To be honest, I don't remember the exact reason I said you're not weighing the criteria evenly. I remember after I made the comment last night, I thought to myself "wait, why did I say it's not applied evenly?" And then after a moment or two I said "oh, right, that's why", but now I can't remember the reason again haha. Oh, I think it was that the stigmata and Eucharist miracles are also not unique to Catholicism doctrinally, but they're considered vindicatory regardless. Then you have the most public appearances of Mary and the only ones that have happened in/on a church, and those aren't considered vindicatory. Those are fairly symmetrical but are interpreted asymmetrically. Another case is Pastor Daniel's resurrection, which included an apparition giving doctrinal content (asking him to spread Pentecostalism, if I recall correctly). This is about as vindicatory as you can get, as resurrection is THE miracle in Christianity, and here we have someone resurrected and saying God's angels told him Pentecostalism is the right religion before bringing him back from the dead, and it's considered basically irrelevant.
7. Pretty much anything can serve as evidence of anything if you're motivated enough. I could frame all the Catholic miracles as evidence for Buddhism if I really wanted to. I do think that some parts of them support Buddhist doctrines, so that's not entirely wrong to do, but it would obviously be silly to say that it's direct support. I think that Buddhism likely explains the full paranormal data better than Catholicism does, but a sufficiently naive and motivated version of me could have argued something like "Buddhism allows for materializations, and Eucharistic miracles are materializations, therefore Buddhism is true". So the specificity of the evidence is not an inherent trait, it depends on the framework you import.
I will say I don’t think you are getting my point about Eucharistic theology. Either way, if you admit that its a possibility the blood is only pointing to their death, rather than causing it (which seems much more plausible to me, I don’t really see any connection of a causal nature), then I think this automatically becomes much less of a problem. We may just be at an impasse on if children can volunteer suffering for God. You also seem to be under the impression Mary commanded the children to tie the rope around themselves, which is false. Tbh, I think the accusations that there are bad fruits at Fatima can only work if you interpret the children’s activities and life in the least charitable way possible. It also has no bearing on the truth of the apparition itself.
Lastly, I don’t think it’s true the devil can appear as Jesus. Maybe as Mary, I would need to think about that more. But that isn’t validated by the fact that the Church has not approved some apparitions. Apparitions could fail to be approved because of some serious moral issue with the witness(es), lack of documentation, or a number of other things. Just because an apparition is not approved does not mean it is demonic.
I wrote a response, but after meditating for a bit, I've decided not to post it right now. Not because it was so bad, but because I'm noticing that the reason for my writing it and posting it right now would be out of a craving for certainty. So I'm just writing this short comment to let you know that I've read your response here. I may post my response, but I want to give it at least ~24 hours or so to see if I think continuing to engage on these issues is actually spiritually fruitful.
Sounds good. One thing I will say if you do decide to respond, I should clarify the devil could not appear as Jesus in such a way that there would be no distinguishing marks between him and the real Jesus. Apparently there's a saint who claimed to have saw the devil presenting as Jesus, but once he asked to see the marks in his hands he disappeared. Small thing but just in case your reply hinges on that.
Not to step into this too much (I am not Catholic and the OP article was in anticipation to respond to a forthcoming article by me), but I don't thibk the statistical point of Lourdes is relevant. The Lambertini Criteria explicitly require the illness to be organic rather thwn psychosomatic. You don't see comparable remissions in mainstream medicine with the speed, degree, and longevity of those at Lourdes
I probably should have said psychogenic instead of psychosomatic, that's my bad. I'm coming from a perspective where some type of predictive processing mechanism is a fundamental part of reality, not just something that happens in the brain. In that sort of frame, even something like the Calanda miracle can be explained in PP terms. The types of psychogenic diseases I have in mind would be things like stigmata and other visible, physical wounds, and the mechanism for those could extend to more complex diseases. I think this creates a pretty unified explanation of all miracles.
Just out of curiosity, could this psychogeneity (?) account for levitations or controls of things external to the miracle worker on your view? It seems to me you can't account for Fatima or Cupertino with simple psychogenic explanations, though I haven't read your article.
My St. Pio article doesn't go into this type of mechanistic explanation, just looks at some of the ways that it would manifest. I don't think I mentioned the PP-like mechanism I'm thinking of in it at all. That's something I plan to write about in the future, but as of now, the framework just remains in my head haha. I've been bringing up bits and pieces of it from time to time in comments though, kind of developing it little by little
Well once you have it fully developed I'll be interested to see it. I find these sorts of objections very interesting. I do think the resurrection of Jesus is very weird on this PP-mechanism. The guy is dead, his followers are grief stricken but also totally convinced he is dead. Who is raising him from the dead? I suppose you could argue this is emanating from them as something outside their control, but once you start saying that it gets really hard to adjudicate between a God-explanation for miracles and a PP-one.
The key is that in a PP-style ontology, concepts like life and death wouldn't be so fixed — laws would arise from the interactions of expectations/predictions. If you have someone who is *extremely* confident about something, like their being God and being able to rise from the dead, they would be able to experience that and convince others of it, just like we can convince others of our normal beliefs. This framework is meant to explain heaven and hell as "real" places as well, it's not just saying that everything is unreal. So you could possibly explain Christianity with something like this in a way that might not be terribly problematic for most Christians. The issue though would be that God would be real, Christ would be risen, but these would all be contingent upon predictions that don't actually need to be there, so they may be "facts" in certain pockets of the entirety of possibility space, but not global, necessary facts. Over time, the weights would likely continue updating, so the "same world" could cycle through God being real and not real with no true fundamental change. However, I could see this framework being compatible with certain arguments for classical theism, Hinduism, or something like DBH's Vedantic Christianity. But I think it wouldn't be possible to get around the issue of reincarnation, which would cross Catholicism off.
Have you read Fr. Francis V. Tiso's book on the Rainbow Body? He's a Catholic priest, and he did research on Khenpo A. Chö's rainbow body attainment, which was very similar to Christ's resurrection: Khenpo A. Chö died, then his body disappeared, and he appeared afterwards to students of his. He was a Tibetan Buddhist, and Tibetan Buddhism comes closest to the PP-style ontology I'm talking about. They don't talk about it in terms of PP, but they have the same sort of "real and not real" approach that I take.
One of the priests in the Zeitoun Church made a simple comparison between Fatima and Zeitoun and said that the appearance of the Virgin in Zeitoun did not feature any speech, so that people would not believe it was specific to the Coptic Orthodox Church, but instead for all
https://youtu.be/QkVwz5zxTjo?si=mrUDySdzrjlcd2Ww (23:30)
Bearing in mind that some bishops of the Church have previously declared that the Virgin did not truly appear except in Egypt, indicating the correctness of our Church specifically. And when a book containing non-Orthodox apparitions, such as Fatima and Lourdes, was presented to the Patriarch of the Church, he objected that the book includes non-Orthodox miracles, and one cannot guarantee their authenticity
I would just disagree that we cannot verify Lourdes or Fatima (or any of the other Marian apparitions).
He did not contest their authenticity; rather, his point was that the primary sources addressing them, which would allow for a judgment on their validity, are inaccessible and difficult for them to reach. Consequently, they cannot verify their authenticity. This seems somewhat true. In reality, Fatima, for instance, is well-known among the Shia as an apparition of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, who allegedly spoke to them and informed them of her identity. This narrative is more widely known than the original story
I don’t think you’re correct about that, we have the memoirs of the seers along with lots of primary source documentation. I’m not aware of this Shia tradition, can you link me to it?
I think he means it’s because of the language barrier and the ability to access original sources, unlike Zeitoun for them. This is the most famous Shia version:
https://www.islam4u.com/ar/almojib/%D9%85%D8%A7-%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D9%80-%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B7%D9%85%D9%87-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AA%D8%BA%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A9-%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B7%D9%85%D9%87-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D1%83%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%9F
Also that website isn’t really pointing me to anything specific besides some other links, I don’t see any discussion of Fatima.
I don’t think that’s really an issue. We have English translations of her memoirs that were published in 1976 and 2000, we have the original letters sent from the bishop to the pope on the secrets, and so much more that’s been documented. If there’s one thing you can’t accuse the church of (not saying you are) it’s failing to document our miracles.
As I mentioned, he didn't explicitly state the reason for their inability to guarantee the authenticity of non-Orthodox miracles. However, I think he means that general sources-such as press reports, writings,all eyewitness testimonies, etc.are easily accessible to them without any language barrier or difficulty in sourcing when it comes to Zeitoun, unlike Fatima and Lourdes. And yes, there was an issue with the link, try this one
https://share.google/Uz99QeMHadkBVGaqk
I heavily disagree. I think those marian apparitions easily prove the veracity of the coptic orthodox church.
First of all, she appeared on top of the coptic orthodox church buildings. I don't think there has ever been any apparition outside the coptic orthodox church in which Mary appeared on top of. For me, it seems very weird that Mary would appear on top of a religious building that's construed as heretical. Just from the mere fact of her appearing on top of the church building I think seems to be approval of the teachings that church building upholds. It doesn't make sense that Mary would appear on top of a mosque where everyone would go there and take her blessings. Likewise, it doesn't make sense that Mary would appear on top of an arian church for people to get blessings from her giving the impression to the gatherers of her approval of that church. In the same logic, it wouldn't make sense for Mary to appear on top of the coptic church (that from the catholic perspective teaches heretical teachings like monophysitism). Now if you want to argue that the coptic church is a sister church to the catholic church and not necessarily heretical then that would be a doctrinal development from the catholic church that strays away from what the Church Fathers in the early church clearly taught, which alone by itself disprove the truthfulness of the catholic church. The mere fact that she appeared on top of the coptic church has to at least make the coptic church a true church among many (if that's what you believe which again I think is not the teaching of the early church) and from that perspective why don't you just then become coptic orthodox out of pascale's wager as the coptic church does not teach that the catholic church is the true church or has salvation (even though some catholics can attain grace and salvation through invincible ignorance) or that there exists sister churches outside of the Oriental Orthodox communion.
Second of all, there is a catholic church a couple of blocks away from the coptic church, in which Mary appeared on top of in Zeitoun. Many coptic theologians meditated on this fact as to why if the catholic church is the true church didn't she appear on top of the catholic church in zeitoun just a couple of blocks away from the coptic church building she appeared on top of? The same people from all different faiths who visited the coptic church in zeitoun when Mary appeared on top of it would have been the same exact people (copts, catholics, protestants, muslims, atheists, etc.) that would have visited the catholic church just down the road. Not even once in those three years did she appear on top of the catholic church that's very close to the coptic church in zeitoun. I think that deserves for us to take a pause and wonder why that's the case. Seems to vindicate coptic orthodoxy here.
Finally, some would argue that the Fatima apparition cuts the other way. If Rome is the true church, and the copts are in error, then surely it would be more important for Mary to speak to the copts and encourage them to submit to the Roman Pontiff? The Catholics already have the right theology, so why take the time to affirm it? It’s the copts who require explicit theological instruction. By remaining silent, she seems to be signing off on Coptic Christianity.
Thanks for your comment!
I can easily respond to all three of these, by just pointing out how you’ve failed to respond to any of the points that I put forward in the article.
Your first point and second points are refuted by the political context of the time, as I showed in the article. I also recommend you look at my article “On the Vindicatory Nature of Catholic Miracles.” In there, I provide ways a miracle can be vindicatory. Appearing on top of a specific Church is not a sufficient criteria for determining vindicatory intent. The goal of the apparition is very clear: a public miracle that reduces sectarian conflict against the Coptics. This is shown in exactly how the miracle played out. Muslims and Christians both thought this was completely consistent with their worldview, and were briefly unified, the violence was quelled. The apparition gives no doctrinal message. Compare that with Fatima. In Fatima, the seers, who are very concerned with the mass conversion of Russia from Eastern Orthodoxy to Catholicism, are vindicated in a massive miracle that converts thousands of skeptics.
This brings us to your third point. You ask why Mary did not tell the Coptics that the Catholic Church was the true church. That actually cuts against your miracle having vindicatory content, since she said no such thing to the Muslims who witnessed the miracle en masse. I pointed this out in the article, I encourage you to read it more carefully. And once again, I can point to a Marian apparition with insanely good evidence that DOES vindicate Catholicism over orthodoxy.
I don't think the vindicatory criteria are being evenly applied. Eucharistic miracles and stigmata have been called vindicatory, but they don't have explicit statements, and I don't think they are clearly more Catholic specific than Mary appearing three times over Coptic churches — to my knowledge, Mary has *only* appeared over Coptic churches, and these are three of the strongest miracles. Plus, as you've argued here, these miracles bring peace, something that is universally accepted as a good fruit, whereas there's a 50/50 chance that the angel that appeared at Fatima killed two children with the chalice of blood. As far as young children dying being a good fruit, that is controversial, to say the least. If the bar is raised to explicit statements made by apparitions, then it seems the Catholic miracle argument rests on Lourdes and Fatima (unless there are other examples I don't know about).
The alternative to this would be the "speaking while miraculous" argument, in which it's argued that if someone is able to perform miracles and then teaches a Catholic doctrine, that serves as vindicatory evidence (St. Pio is the poster child of this). This argument doesn't quite work because if you take St. Pio as an example, earlier in life, he taught massa damnata, but as he grew older, he switched to believing that very few people go to hell. So we end up with contradictory stances being vindicated. And this would also seem to require a new "saintly infallibility"doctrine. Also, this argument would apply to miracle workers in other religions, some of whom have very strong cases, arguably eclipsing St. Pio's, and teach doctrines that are decidedly not Catholic.
So if we list out the evidence for each side, I see it like this:
Catholic side:
-Two apparitions that gave explicit doctrinal statements. One apparition led to the death and torture of two children, the other led to miraculous healings over many years, but the rate of healings doesn't seem to be any higher than the rate of spontaneous remission.
Coptic side:
-Three apparitions, the most public and well-documented miracles in history, imo (we have photos of the apparitions themselves, which is far better evidence than Fatima or Lourdes). They are the only apparitions to appear over a church. They immediately led to the peace and well-being of many.
The number of conversions from each is an empirical question, and we don't have data for that. I can say at least for myself, that Fatima has actually basically become evidence against Catholicism for me the more I've looked into it, whereas Zeitoun remains solid evidence for some type of Christianity.
Lots to respond to here:
1. I think your claim about the children being killed by the chalice of blood is totally bunk. There is nothing in the apparitions to indicate this. It is true that, as least as Lucia recounts it, she only partook of the Host while Jacinta and Francisco partook of the Blood. However, on Catholic theology this is a meaningless distinction. We believe that every act of communion participates in the body and blood of Christ, so they all received the same thing in substance. It is correct that the Virgin Mary told them that Jacinta and Francisco would die young, but this is not said in some demonic way, rather it is said as "I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon. But you are to stay here some time longer. Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved." What does "take" mean? Well it clearly means bringing them to heaven. Under our theology, this is HIGHLY PREFERABLE to being alive on earth.
2. Identifying the sacrifices of the children as “torture” is extremely loaded language. They were within the age of reason, capable of making their own decisions about what penances they offered for each other. They did so with resolve. You’ve left out the part where the Virgin explicitly commands them not to use the rope at night, which seems like unequivocal evidence against this being “torture.”
3. I am not certain that the rates of healings are the same as the rates of spontaneous remission. Do you mean spontaneous remission for the illnesses that these people are being healed from, or for illness in general? This also seems obviously false for healings of blindness, paralysis, and other ailments that do not remit. It is also incredibly striking probabilistically that these miracles are occurring at the moment these people pray a novena at Fatima, get in water, etc. Spontaneous remission being consistently tied to Fatima is itself miraculous.
4. I’ll need your sources for that claim that Pio developed his teaching on hell. As far as I can tell, there is one quote where he indicates many people have conversion in the last moments of death, but he also consistently affirmed hell for non-Catholics, see Muse’s post about what Pio said in confession. Either way, the existence of that quote doesn’t seem to indicate change, and I can’t even find dating for it.
5. Our argument is not that Pio had infallibility. Our argument is that Pio 1) worked a great number of naturally inexplicable miracles that were 2) clearly tied to the true God and Jesus Christ which offered him 3) high levels of spiritual insight via visions and 4) that those miracles (such as mind reading) were specifically going on when Pio was teaching the necessity of being Catholic. Even if you dispute 4), the fact that Pio seemingly had extreme spiritual insight about heaven, hell, and purgatory indicates that we should heed his judgment about how we get there. As far as I’m aware, I don’t know of any “contradictions” from Pio when 4) was going on.
6. Am I applying vindicatory criteria evenly? In my view, there are two ways miracles can be vindicatory. As a matter of demonstration, when that miracle is tied to a clear message (which claims to speak in the name of the Lord). As a matter of probabilistic judgment, in which certain miracles are restricted to a religion. Miracles can be of the first and second category. To me, Zeitoun/Assuit/Warraq all affirm the message of some sort of afterlife and the importance of the Virgin Mary. They might probabilistically weigh on the Coptic Church being true, but only before one gets a full look at the evidence. Our Lady of Knock seems like a clear counterexample, and I’m hoping to do more investigation into other miracles with doctrinal content (so I’ll get back to you on that). As a more general counterexample, I am not aware of any scientifically verified Eucharistic miracles in the Coptic Church. Sure, the Copts affirm real presence theology, but we also affirm the importance of Mary.
7. I’m not totally certain Zeitoun is specific evidence for Christianity. I am really struck by the fact that many Muslims saw this apparition as completely consistent with their faith. Now maybe they have something to reconcile in the fact that this happened over a Church, but it’s not obvious to me and it seems like they could appeal to some of the principles I laid out.
1. There is only no distinction if you assume that this was actually an angel of God giving communion and not a deceptive entity giving them something else. We know that entities can appear as Christ and Mary given that the Church has rejected the authenticity of some apparitions of Christ and Mary. So an apparition of communion doesn't guarantee it's actually communion, and in that case, the equivalence between the drink and wafer doesn't hold, as we don't know that they are actually the body and blood. Keep in mind I qualified this by saying there is a 50/50 chance (either the blood killed them or it indicated that they were the ones to die), and I said that the goodness of child death is controversial. You can of course make an argument that it's good for children to die because they will be taken to heaven. This is very common in Islam during war. However, you then need to affirm the implications of this: Baptized children have a better chance at going to heaven in general because of the way age factors into mortal sin, so if it's good for the two children to die and go to heaven, then the same would apply to a great many Catholic children. In other words, there's the basis for an argument here that it would be good for more Catholic children to die. I think you would likely not agree that more dead Catholic children is better than fewer, and so I don't think it's fair to extend that to Fatima.
2. The children were 7, 9, and 10, unless I'm mistaken. That's not even middle school age. The youngest was only just past the age of childhood amnesia and was only two years out of kindergarten. I do not agree they were in the "age of reason". There is a reason that young children cannot make decisions about things like their medical treatment, schooling, etc. They were given practices meant to inflict significant pain on themselves by an authority figure, and Jacinta underwent surgery to remove two of her ribs without anesthesia while already suffering greatyl from influenza (hard to describe this as anything other than torturous) as part of this practice of offering suffering. This is probably pain around the level of crucifixion. She did this at 10 years old. If a teacher at an elementary school told children "if you hurt yourselves with this rope, I'll give you extra credit, but don't wear it at night", that teacher might be arrested for child abuse if any children went through with it. If a college professor did the same to their 18-year-old students, that would be very different (likely no criminal case, but I'd imagine they might be fired). No one would argue that the elementary school students were old enough to decide this matter on their own, and no one would argue that a teacher who got their students to undergo surgery without anesthesia did anything remotely acceptable.
3. This is something I've seen in passing a few times when doing some research with LLMs, I can't stand by it too much, so take that part with a grain of salt. But it's come up enough times that I don't think it's a hallucination. My take is that some of the new research on predictive processing indicates that a lot of these miraculous cures could be due to psychological factors. Too much to go into here, but PP indicates that belief can have a huge impact on functional disease, and there is one case of someone who was blind being cured due to a strong belief in her doctor, who convinced her she could see. So if someone has a disease with a psychosomatic component (which could be much more prevalent than we realize — see my post on St. Pio and psychogenic wounds to see how psychological states can potentially manifest in physical ways) and has a strong belief in Catholicism, then the implicit belief that they are cured could be enough to cure them in a framework like this.
4. Arthur T is the one who told me about these quotes. He found them in "The Friar of San Giovanni: Tales of Padre Pio" by John McCaffery and paralleled in Bernard Ruffin's biography of him. Here is the quote from the former:
'As he grew older, Padre Pio seemed to soften his theology. "I believe that not
a great number of souls go to hell," he remarked. "God loves us so much. He
formed us in His image. God the Son marshalled died to redeem us. He loves us
beyond understanding. And it is my belief that even when we have passed from
the consciousness of this world, when we appear to be dead, God, before He
judges us, will give us a chance to see and understand what sin really is. And if
we understand it properly, how could we fail to repent?"'
And from the latter:
"Terrible indeed! And yet, and yet, I believe that not a great
number of souls go to hell. God loves us so much. He formed us
in His image. God's Son marshalled to redeem us. He loves
us beyond understanding. And it is my belief that even when we
have passed from the consciousness of this world, when we ap-
pear to be dead, God, before He judges us, will give us a chance
to see and understand what sin really is. And if we understand it
properly, how could we fail to repent?"
5. I don't know the examples you're referring to in regards to (4). My point is that I can say the same about other spiritual adepts, even in non-Christian religions, who taught their doctrines (some of which directly contradict Catholicism) while performing miracles.
6. To be honest, I don't remember the exact reason I said you're not weighing the criteria evenly. I remember after I made the comment last night, I thought to myself "wait, why did I say it's not applied evenly?" And then after a moment or two I said "oh, right, that's why", but now I can't remember the reason again haha. Oh, I think it was that the stigmata and Eucharist miracles are also not unique to Catholicism doctrinally, but they're considered vindicatory regardless. Then you have the most public appearances of Mary and the only ones that have happened in/on a church, and those aren't considered vindicatory. Those are fairly symmetrical but are interpreted asymmetrically. Another case is Pastor Daniel's resurrection, which included an apparition giving doctrinal content (asking him to spread Pentecostalism, if I recall correctly). This is about as vindicatory as you can get, as resurrection is THE miracle in Christianity, and here we have someone resurrected and saying God's angels told him Pentecostalism is the right religion before bringing him back from the dead, and it's considered basically irrelevant.
7. Pretty much anything can serve as evidence of anything if you're motivated enough. I could frame all the Catholic miracles as evidence for Buddhism if I really wanted to. I do think that some parts of them support Buddhist doctrines, so that's not entirely wrong to do, but it would obviously be silly to say that it's direct support. I think that Buddhism likely explains the full paranormal data better than Catholicism does, but a sufficiently naive and motivated version of me could have argued something like "Buddhism allows for materializations, and Eucharistic miracles are materializations, therefore Buddhism is true". So the specificity of the evidence is not an inherent trait, it depends on the framework you import.
Lots more to say here, so thanks for your response but I don’t think I’ll do another comprehensive reply right now. I would direct you to this article where I talk about Daniel E’s resurrection and its doctrinal implications: https://mirabiliadei.substack.com/p/on-the-vindicatory-nature-of-catholic?r=6ahts4.
I will say I don’t think you are getting my point about Eucharistic theology. Either way, if you admit that its a possibility the blood is only pointing to their death, rather than causing it (which seems much more plausible to me, I don’t really see any connection of a causal nature), then I think this automatically becomes much less of a problem. We may just be at an impasse on if children can volunteer suffering for God. You also seem to be under the impression Mary commanded the children to tie the rope around themselves, which is false. Tbh, I think the accusations that there are bad fruits at Fatima can only work if you interpret the children’s activities and life in the least charitable way possible. It also has no bearing on the truth of the apparition itself.
Lastly, I don’t think it’s true the devil can appear as Jesus. Maybe as Mary, I would need to think about that more. But that isn’t validated by the fact that the Church has not approved some apparitions. Apparitions could fail to be approved because of some serious moral issue with the witness(es), lack of documentation, or a number of other things. Just because an apparition is not approved does not mean it is demonic.
I wrote a response, but after meditating for a bit, I've decided not to post it right now. Not because it was so bad, but because I'm noticing that the reason for my writing it and posting it right now would be out of a craving for certainty. So I'm just writing this short comment to let you know that I've read your response here. I may post my response, but I want to give it at least ~24 hours or so to see if I think continuing to engage on these issues is actually spiritually fruitful.
Sounds good. One thing I will say if you do decide to respond, I should clarify the devil could not appear as Jesus in such a way that there would be no distinguishing marks between him and the real Jesus. Apparently there's a saint who claimed to have saw the devil presenting as Jesus, but once he asked to see the marks in his hands he disappeared. Small thing but just in case your reply hinges on that.
Not to step into this too much (I am not Catholic and the OP article was in anticipation to respond to a forthcoming article by me), but I don't thibk the statistical point of Lourdes is relevant. The Lambertini Criteria explicitly require the illness to be organic rather thwn psychosomatic. You don't see comparable remissions in mainstream medicine with the speed, degree, and longevity of those at Lourdes
I'm not referring to the types of psychosomatic diseases that would make their way into any currently criteria, I'm using the term pretty idiosyncratically. If you want an idea of how I'm using it, you can see my post here: https://paintingsilence.substack.com/p/st-pio-stigmata-and-psychogenic-wounds
I probably should have said psychogenic instead of psychosomatic, that's my bad. I'm coming from a perspective where some type of predictive processing mechanism is a fundamental part of reality, not just something that happens in the brain. In that sort of frame, even something like the Calanda miracle can be explained in PP terms. The types of psychogenic diseases I have in mind would be things like stigmata and other visible, physical wounds, and the mechanism for those could extend to more complex diseases. I think this creates a pretty unified explanation of all miracles.
Just out of curiosity, could this psychogeneity (?) account for levitations or controls of things external to the miracle worker on your view? It seems to me you can't account for Fatima or Cupertino with simple psychogenic explanations, though I haven't read your article.
Yep actually just wrote a comment about that in another thread: https://substack.com/profile/268147303-otto-the-renunciant/note/c-291606303
My St. Pio article doesn't go into this type of mechanistic explanation, just looks at some of the ways that it would manifest. I don't think I mentioned the PP-like mechanism I'm thinking of in it at all. That's something I plan to write about in the future, but as of now, the framework just remains in my head haha. I've been bringing up bits and pieces of it from time to time in comments though, kind of developing it little by little
Well once you have it fully developed I'll be interested to see it. I find these sorts of objections very interesting. I do think the resurrection of Jesus is very weird on this PP-mechanism. The guy is dead, his followers are grief stricken but also totally convinced he is dead. Who is raising him from the dead? I suppose you could argue this is emanating from them as something outside their control, but once you start saying that it gets really hard to adjudicate between a God-explanation for miracles and a PP-one.
The key is that in a PP-style ontology, concepts like life and death wouldn't be so fixed — laws would arise from the interactions of expectations/predictions. If you have someone who is *extremely* confident about something, like their being God and being able to rise from the dead, they would be able to experience that and convince others of it, just like we can convince others of our normal beliefs. This framework is meant to explain heaven and hell as "real" places as well, it's not just saying that everything is unreal. So you could possibly explain Christianity with something like this in a way that might not be terribly problematic for most Christians. The issue though would be that God would be real, Christ would be risen, but these would all be contingent upon predictions that don't actually need to be there, so they may be "facts" in certain pockets of the entirety of possibility space, but not global, necessary facts. Over time, the weights would likely continue updating, so the "same world" could cycle through God being real and not real with no true fundamental change. However, I could see this framework being compatible with certain arguments for classical theism, Hinduism, or something like DBH's Vedantic Christianity. But I think it wouldn't be possible to get around the issue of reincarnation, which would cross Catholicism off.
Have you read Fr. Francis V. Tiso's book on the Rainbow Body? He's a Catholic priest, and he did research on Khenpo A. Chö's rainbow body attainment, which was very similar to Christ's resurrection: Khenpo A. Chö died, then his body disappeared, and he appeared afterwards to students of his. He was a Tibetan Buddhist, and Tibetan Buddhism comes closest to the PP-style ontology I'm talking about. They don't talk about it in terms of PP, but they have the same sort of "real and not real" approach that I take.