Do You See What I See?

Pope cancels Mary's World Wide Tour

Apparently it's not going to be as easy as it used to be to get people to believe you saw the Blessed Virgin Mary on your closet door or that your life size Mary statue is weeping tears of blood.

Nope. The Vatican is drawing up a book called the "vademecum" with a new set of ground rules for getting your apparitions (a/k/a hallucinations) approved by them. This is the first time they've updated the rules since 1978.

The first rule of Fright Club is "You must not talk about Fright Club." That's right. Tell anyone about your apparition and all bets are off.

So I guess you whisper to your local bishop that Mary's been showing up in your shower stall (hypothetical situation) and a team of shrinks comes and examines you to see if you're in need of anti-psychotic medication. In the report I read it said the psychiatrists would be "Catholics or atheists." What's wrong with a good old Jewish psychiatrist?

I digress.

After that some theologians study the messages you get from Our Lady of the Shower Stall to see if they contravene the Church's teachings.

If you get the green light from the shrinks and the theologians do they give your hallucination the stamp of approval?

Of course not! The next group of guys called in are the demonologists who will check to see that these messages aren't really being sent by Satan of the Shower Stall.

Once you are determined to 1) not have publicized your vision, 2) not to be crazy, 3) not to be undermining the teachings of the Vatican and 4) not to be possessed by the devil, your apparition can be submitted to the Head Honchos in Rome for their perusal.

It seems that there have been just way too many Mary sightings lately and the Vatican is getting damn sick of it.

I have always wondered why the Blessed Virgin Mary doesn't just go on television or even the web. Wouldn't people be a lot more likely to believe it's really her? Why does she persist in visiting little kids in impoverished and backwards locales? Someone needs to speak to her PR person.