Fake Relics And Miracles

This article is from a PDF file on LutheranLibrary.org. It was published by The Converted Catholic Magazine which was edited by former Catholic priest Leo Herbert Lehmann.

THE STRENGTH of the Roman Catholic church lies in the power it has exercised for centuries over the illiterate semi-Christian masses of Eastern Europe and the Latin countries. It has grown fat on their credulity. Even in the modern world it has dared to defy science and historical facts just as if it were in the Middle Ages. This defiance and intolerance aroused great admiration on the part of Hitler. In fact the Nazism that he founded is only an adaptation to politics of the means and principles by which Catholicism grew strong: the Inquisition, condemnation and burning of books, mass pageants, and an hierarchical order with one sole leader who is an infallible demi-god who lays down the law to his underlings.

In Mein Kampf, the Bible of Nazism, Hitler outlined and praised the principles of Catholic organization. Basic among these principles was the dogmatism of the Catholic church and its defiance of known facts. On page 882 of the unexpurgated edition of his book he expressed his admiration for this attitude in the following words:

“Here, too, one can learn from the Catholic Church. Although its structure of doctrines in many instances collides, quite unnecessarily, with exact science and research, yet it is unwilling to sacrifice even one little syllable of its dogmas.”

Among the teachings of Catholicism that conflict “quite unnecessarily with exact science and research” are its countless ‘pious lies’ that masquerade as facts. For the sake of the record we will narrate a few of them here. Hundreds of them are listed in such scholarly works as Karl von Hase’s Handbook to the Controversy with Rome and Five Centuries of Religion by G. G. Coulton of the University of Cambridge. Those who want to explore the unlimited credulity of ignorant and prejudiced minds are referred to these sources, which in turn quote from Catholic authors.

In Rome a set of 28 stone steps, covered with wood, have for hundreds of years been venerated as the very steps of Pilate’s palace in Jerusalem up which Jesus walked. They are described as having been brought to Rome by Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. A notice posted at the foot of these stairs informs the public that Pope Pius VII, during the 19th century, granted nine years of indulgences for every step of them that a person prayerfully climbs without getting off his knees. In 1909 Pope Pius X ‘raised the ante’ by granting to everyone who completed the performance on his knees full forgiveness of all his venial sins and the Purgatorial punishment that might still be due on mortal sins. Tens of thousands of simple believers go through this act every year, and contribute generously to collections taken on the spot, as a sort of double-check on getting the prize indulgences.

In 1903 the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome formed the Archbishop of San Jago in Chile, in answer to his inquiry, that it was permissible to swallow little paper pictures of the Virgin Mary in order to recover health. Similar pictures of Joseph and St. Anthony are swallowed by devout Catholics in this country. Franciscan churches, like the one near Pennsylvania Station in New York City, give them out for a money “offering”.

One of the world-famous fictions of Catholicism concerns Saint Januarins, Bishop who is supposed to have been martyred in 305 A.D. His body for centuries has been entombed in Naples, Italy, in a church erected in His honor. Since the end of the 14th century his body is preserved in two small phials. It is normally solid, but three times a year (in May, September and December) it liquefies and bubbles when placed near a silver bust said to contain the saint’s head. Catholics stoutly maintain that no law of science can explain this phenomenon.

Just how this miracle happens was explained in the October, 1921, issue of the scholarly theological quarterly, The Hibbert Journal, by Dr. Frederic N. Williams, L.S.A., L.R.C.P., a fellow of the Linnaean Society:

“When at Naples several years ago, I visited the municipal hospital; and after going round called at the hospital dispensary to have a talk with the American pharmacist under whose superintendence the department was. While there, a young acolyte from the Cathedrale di San Gennaio (St. Januarius) came in and asked the pharmacist for the usual mixture for use at the feast which was to take place the next day, the first Saturday in May. With a smile and a few words of banter, the pharmacist prepared a mixture of ox-bile and crystals of Glauber’s salt (sulphate of soda), and, keeping the written message, handed it to the messenger to take back to the cathedral sacristy.

“After thus dismissing the acolyte, the practical pharmacist simply remarked to me that miracles took place nowadays, and this one was prepared in a hospital pharmacy with very satisfactory results. The next morning the pharamacist and I sat in a café and watched the solemn procession of the liquefied blood from the church of Santa ta Chiara on its way to the cathedral. Thanks to my genial companion, the ‘miracle’ was quite successful. He also explained that at the second celebration, which takes places on the 16th of December in the cathedral only (without a procession), the liquefaction is slower on account of the cooler weather.”

Laughable as these fake miracles are to people of unbiased reason, still funnier ones received wide acceptance in medieval times. In the days of the Crusaders such alleged relics as the swaddling clothes of Jesus, (he tears he shed at Lazarus’s grave and the like, were brought to Europe. The crib of the Christ Child is still publicly venerated in Rome at Saint Mary Major’s, one of Rome’s principal basilicas. Incredible though it seems, Dr. Cecil Cadoux in Catholicism and Christianity, p. 486, vouches for the fact on historical evidence that “things like a rung of Jacob’s ladder, Moses’ horns, Jesse’s root, and a feather from Michael the archangel’s wings, enjoyed in the Middle Ages a transitory veneration.” Anyone familiar with Europe knows that the Benedictine abbey of Monte Vergine, south of Naples, exhibits, as a relic, milk of the Virgin Mary. Seven other churches in Europe make similar claims. To encourage devotion to the shrine at Monte Vergine Mussolini built a road up to the mountain-top where the abbey is located.

Little wonder that Lord Acton, well-known Roman Catholic and historian, father of the Cambridge Modern History, wrote to Mary Gladstone, daughter of England’s famous Prime Minister, about Vatican Catholicism: “It not only promotes, it inculcates, distinct mendacity and untruthfulness. In certain cases it is made a duty to lie.”

St. Paul (in II Thess. 2:9-11) warned of this “working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in those that perish… And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”