You gotta hand it to the Virgin Mary — for a dead person, she sure gets around. Catholics are often virtually obsessed with her and they tend to lose their minds when they see her on a tortilla or a potato chip. And when she bleeds? Well that’s just a full-on celebration:
Believers are flocking to a Baton Rouge neighborhood to see a statue of Mother Mary with their own eyes.
Everyone believes the statue is bleeding.
Hai Nguyen is the owner. His daughter translated and says he was doing lawn work when the unexpected happened.
“He looked up and saw blood coming down,” said Nguyen’s daughter.
Blood dripping from the side of Mary’s face, and the word spread quickly.
“He don’t know how to explain it. He just know that maybe God sent a message through Mary,” she said.
Here’s a video about it:
A local TV station has taken a sample of the “blood” and is having it tested. Anyone wanna bet that it’s not blood at all?
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Trebuchet
July 18, 2012 at 1:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If the TV station finds out the “blood” is rusty water from a leaky pipe, will the reporter be arrested?
DaveL
July 18, 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, I don’t know about that. It seems to me that all but the least sophisticated hoaxers could arrange to use real blood. It might even be human blood, in which case I’d be shocked if it weren’t a DNA match for a person with access to the statue.
Bronze Dog
July 18, 2012 at 1:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I didn’t watch the video, but it’s not surprising that actual blood sometimes shows up in “miracles” like this. Of course, if it is real blood, the believers might be surprised to learn Mary has Nguyen DNA.
robb
July 18, 2012 at 1:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
looks like mary was pwned by a sniper in Halo.
bbgunn
July 18, 2012 at 1:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Looks like a small caliber wound in the left frontal area. Wonder if ol’ Mr. Nguyen was popping pigeons that were crapping on his statue and a pellet punched through the bird into the clay.
danreed
July 18, 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Looks like a bird ate some berries and “rested” on the statue.
d cwilson
July 18, 2012 at 1:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pfft. You and your “science”. Don’t you understand transubstantiation? It’s blood if you really, really believe it is, even when it still looks and tastes exactly like wine.
Next you’re going to tell me that the Shroud of Turin is only 500 years old just because some godless scientist used carbon dating to say it is.
raym
July 18, 2012 at 2:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’d day they just read “Lucky You” by Carl Hiaasen (1997), and decided to see if it really would work.
The supply of credulous mugs shows no sign of abating.
ebotebo
July 18, 2012 at 2:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What these stoooooooopid fuckers believe!!!
theschwa
July 18, 2012 at 2:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I would not be surprised. It is likely merely reversetransubstantiation. That, or the blood simply untransubstantiated. I forget, what is the half-life of transubstantiated blood?
billydee
July 18, 2012 at 2:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Even if the statue is really bleeding real blood, what message is it trying to send?
And, if it really is the Mother of God, why doesn’t she get better bookings? After 2000 years she should be ready for Carnegie Hall by now.
tassilo
July 18, 2012 at 3:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Of course its not blood, that would be a miracle. It looks like bird shit to me. I have numerous such appearances on my car when choke cherries are ripe.
kacyellis
July 18, 2012 at 3:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Superstitious folk Catholicism doesn’t really bother me very much. A few local Catholics are enamored by a statue–how innocuous. It’s the politically involved bishops that really frighten me. Now if the bleeding statue becomes an icon for the advancement of Catholic political power, I’ll become concerned. In the meantime, let the locals enjoy their idiosyncratic ritual.
thisisaturingtest
July 18, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@#11, billydee:
The message they hear will be whatever they want to hear. This is the way religion works; it’s the reason for religion.
It may turn out to be blood; they allowed it to be tested, which suggests confidence to that point, at least. But you can bet that, if it is blood, nobody with access to the statue before it began “bleeding” will allow their blood to be tested for a match.
John Hinkle
July 18, 2012 at 3:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hmm, I think I’ll get me a bleeding statue, and then start a superPAC from it. I’ll toss in some gay-hate and add sprinkles of keep-the-women-down, and by September I’ll be backpacking the Cascades with donkeys and servants, by air-conditioned helicopter. Donkeys and servants have to hump trail of course.
Zeno
July 18, 2012 at 3:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Our Lady of the Artichokes” by Katherine Vaz is an entertaining story about a woman who creates a Virgin Mary apparition in order to get back at her landlord. However, the crowds of pilgrims get out of hand and blight her own life as well as her target’s. Although the story is funny, the accurate depiction of believers’ gullibility is also disheartening.
Eric R
July 18, 2012 at 4:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I can see the headlines tommorrow – “It’s a miracle , bird shits on statue”
Quodlibet
July 18, 2012 at 5:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Stigmata!
Modusoperandi
July 18, 2012 at 5:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
kacyellis “Now if the bleeding statue becomes an icon for the advancement of Catholic political power, I’ll become concerned.”
Like they did with uteri?*
* What, too soon?
kacyellis
July 18, 2012 at 8:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Modusoperandi: “Like they did with uteri?* * What, too soon?”
Well, the statue is bleeding from its head, not its vagina. I can only imagine the theo-political implications of such bleeding.
reverendrodney
July 18, 2012 at 9:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If you want my opinion, and I am sure that you do, it appears symbolic of a bullet wound. Now, if the pope is shot in the head in the not too distant future, this statue will surely be regarded as the predictor of that event. Then watch the flocks come.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
July 18, 2012 at 9:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You’d think the fucking Catholics, of all people, would understand the significance of a virgin bleeding…
lorn
July 18, 2012 at 10:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Religion has a major problem with the fact that the last unequivocal direct contact with humans was, according to the Bible, better than two thousand years ago. The sad thing is that most Christians sense at a very deep level that praying feels a whole lot like talking to themselves.
They want a sign. Something that clearly says that God knows them and cares. Something that can’t be mistaken for anything but a direct message from God.
The want and need it so much that they are easy taken in.
gratch
July 19, 2012 at 2:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The more you hear of Virgin Mary sightings the more she sounds like one of those parents of child actors you see on the TV, doesn’t she? Her and the (biological) father decided before he was even born that the kid was going to be famous and pressured him into it his whole life. Then after a lot of publicity and a few brushes with the law the kid dies young and now 2000 years later Mary is still throwing herself into the limelight and mugging for the camera. “Oh boo hoo hoo, my son died and went to live in the eternal bliss of heaven after suffering a bad weekend for our sins!”
busterggi
July 19, 2012 at 9:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bleeding statues, mages on trees & toast but still not one amputee with regenerated limbs.
Pinky
July 19, 2012 at 5:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Billydee said:
July 18, 2012 at 2:31 pm
The message may be:
Hey loser, what’s up with the more than life size statue of me at your front door? Are you using me to prove how devoted you are to an oppressive religious organization while pursuing the neighborhood’s most kitschy yard award?
Oh and be sure to, instead of quietly contemplating this attempt at vandalism (I was there, remember?), allow publication of a coincidental red stair on this simulacrum’s face and disrupt the neighborhood with a plethora of religulous nutjobs, drawn like pyromaniacs to a fire, parking willy nilly and littering.
Don’t forget to loudly scream religious persecution to anyone who complains about the noise, disruption and pollution.
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One last comment. Could the religious studies interviewee be any more weaselly?
Marcus Ranum
July 20, 2012 at 10:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Why not a real miracle? Like making supply-side economics work, or something cool like that.
Uncle Glenny
July 20, 2012 at 11:17 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
At least she wasn’t crying raw sewage.
My first guess would be bird sh*t, although just the act of taking a sample I would think would be enough to identify that.
I once gave myself an awful scar after walking over my lawn barefoot then noticing all the bloodstains on my toes…