 158. Stigmata (All Faiths) |
The Stigmata (and Religious Phenomena in General) Are a Tradition-Inspired Product of Human Psycho-Physical Participation in the Unity and Ultimate Divinity of Reality, and Not a "Miracle" or "Proof" of an "Outside" God
The stigmata are spontaneously appearing wounds (usually, bleeding wounds) on the bodies of individuals, the majority of whom adhere to Christianity (although this is not always the case).
The most famous individual who showed these signs in the twentieth century is Padre Pio, a Catholic priest who died in 1968. Padre Pio is shown and discussed in the documentary entitled “A Modern Miracle?”.1 But many other individuals, who are simply ordinary people within the Christian tradition, also appear in this same documentary. Their various wounds are shown, and so forth.
In the typical case of a stigmatic, a kind of spotting or bruising appears on the palms, and (perhaps) also on the backs of the hands, and sometimes on the feet, and sometimes around the head. After the spots or bruises appear, the individual starts to bleed, either periodically or (more or less) continuously. Sometimes a wound also appears on the right side of the body, or on the left side. Traditionally, it is said that wounds on the right side of the body reproduce the wound that Jesus of Nazareth reportedly received from a lance or a spear being thrust into the right side of his body after his crucifixion (while he was yet suspended on the cross), but some of the individuals pictured in this documentary also show wounds elsewhere on the body, including the left side of the body. There are, in fact, various and different combinations of wounds, and not all of the most typical wounds appear in all cases.
One individual who is shown and interviewed a number of times in this documentary is a fairly young man who is unable to eat, apparently because of a tendency toward extreme nausea that is associated with his stigmatic wounds—and, therefore, he receives nutrition from a tube inserted into his nose. Female stigmatics of one or another degree of sanctity are also shown. And some of the individuals shown also indicate that they have had visions of one kind or another.
In the documentary, in addition to the showing and interviewing of individuals who manifest stigmatic signs, there are also a number of interviews with people who offer interpretations of this phenomenon. The interpretations offered are characteristically "Western", in that they are (in general) attempts to figure out how manifestations such as the stigmata could occur due to purely psychological causes. In general, these interpreters typically intend to suggest or argue that phenomena which are regarded by some to be of Divine origin are merely products of the mind and the brain. Such interpreters reason that, if similar phenomena can be produced by hypnosis (as has been demonstrated in some special cases), then the spontaneous appearance of such phenomena (without hypnosis) must (similarly) be merely a result of an individual's psychological (or mental, or brain-mind) inclinations. Therefore, such interpreters tend to argue that an individual with a certain psychological disposition, together with an association with Christianity, could develop the spontaneous wounds of a stigmatic—and, in that case, the wounds would have developed simply on that psychological and cultural basis, and (therefore) without any "outside" Divine "Influence" involved. And, of course, that can, indeed, be the case.
But what is being displayed by these interpreters—and, in general, by this documentary, as an interpretation of the stigmata—is the present-time philosophical poverty of the West. The West in the "modern" era simply does not have the necessary philosophical basis to rightly understand and evaluate religious phenomena. There is, in the "modern" West, a presumption that, if they are to be taken as indications that religion and the Divine are to be taken seriously, religious phenomena (whether physical or non-physical) should not have anything to do with the individual's mind, but should be caused entirely by some sort of Divine "Intender" (the Divine as "Will", making wounds appear on an individual's body), and that only such Divinely "Intended" phenomena can legitimately be said to be religious. In fact, this point of view represents a rather naive, popular, and conventional notion of the Divine altogether, without great philosophical depth.
- “A Modern Miracle”, A film documentary investigating and interpreting the phenomena of the stigmata in the twentieth century. Directed by John O'Regan. From the Network First television series. 51 minutes. Produced by John Piper (hard to find but available on video).
