BREAKING: Virgin Mary appears in Houston on a metal baking sheet!!

[Doondoo]

They kneeled. They cried. They asked for healing.

Before them, on an altar of roses and prayer candles, was a metal baking sheet, stained with what hundreds of Houston Catholics now believe is an image of the Virgin Mary.

Guadalupe Rodriguez, a Pugh Elementary School cafeteria worker, discovered the possible miracle on Ash Wednesday, while scrubbing away the last crumbs from the pizza lunch.

.......

On Wednesday, Rodriguez, a longtime kitchen worker, was leaning over the sink of the cafeteria at Pugh Elementary washing sheet pans — the kind that normally hold rows of chocolate chip cookies or chicken nuggets.

It was with the last pan, pulled from the cold rinse, that the Virgin appeared, Rodriguez, 59, said.

"I started looking at it, and started looking at it, until I realized it was the Virgin," she said.



http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4578164.html

[Richard D]

1. They'll sell it on eBay

for a whole lot of money.

[immoderate]

2. Looks like a picture of Anna Nicole.

:shrug:

--IMM

[SKKY]

29. Dude, that's so wrong!

I'm jealous I didn't think of it first.

[crim son]

3. It's either the Virgin or Mother Superior from The Sound of Music.

*snort*

[Bitwit1234]

4. Now you can understand

how farwell, dobson, robertson and all the other crooks get all that money from their poor parishoners. People who don't even have enough money left over to buy food, clothes and health insurance for themselves and their children. They give most of their money to these rotten so called religious crooks. Who then go out and buy themselves cars, jewlery, houses and gourge themselves on food, while their parishoners starve. When you see people who believe this stuff you can see why they give the religious crooks all their money.

[LibDemAlways]

5. And some of us wonder how the chimp ever got

enough votes to be able to steal two elections.

Seriously, if (big if) such a phenomenon were possible, why the hell would the mother of Jesus choose to show up on a dirty baking pan at Pugh School in Houston? I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

[walldude]

6. And people wonder why Christianity is made fun of..

They are praying to an OVEN PAN!

[mcscajun]

18. Religious pareidolia has no boundaries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_pareidolia

[uppityperson]

7. Why do these things always look, also, like something that would get deleted here?

[Duncan Grant]

8. Our Lady of the All-Meat Super Combo?

Good grief, it's a grease spot on a freakin' pizza pan. :eyes:

[Obamarama]

9. Our Lady of the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've said it before, and I'll no doubt say it again, but why doesn't the holy family members ever appear to, say....Lutherans named Knute Johansen?

And, if they were going to make themselves known to mortal humankind, don't you think they would choose to do it in a more meaningful manifestation than on an old cookie sheet?

I don't understand the pyschological pathology behind people who see the Virgin Mary on grilled cheese sandwiches and cookie sheets.

[noamnety]

10. As much as I bash the patriarchy

I would not make an altar and kneel at what appears to be the shadow of a man's genitals after being annihilated by an atomic blast.

[frogcycle]

11. i am sitting here laughing so hard i am crying

as Olbermann would say -

You can't make this stuff up!"

:rofl:

[kestrel91316]

12. OMG, I'm not even a judeochristian, and I think this is idolatry.

What is with these people who obsess over images that appear by some freak coincidence???????

magical thinking
magical thinking
magical thinking
magical thinking
magical thinking

Carl Sagan must be absolutely SPINNING in his grave.

[HappyWeasel]

13. I'm sorry but this is incredibly stupid.

What about the 3-chambered peanut? WHAT ABOUT THAT!!??!!?!?!? That's is a HOLY RELIC!!!!

[noamnety]

14. The peanut trinity is a true miracle.

*genuflects*

[johncoby2]

15. Holy Sweet Moses!

[TlalocW]

16. Oh, man the Grilled-Cheese Virgin Mary is going to be pissed

Because its press is now being taken by the Cookie-Sheet Virgin Mary.

TlalocW

[mcscajun]

17. Interesting essay on religious pareidolia...

I could wish that much of this got published prominently in articles on these "apparitions".

Faces in the clouds. Faces in sandwiches, clam shells, celestial images, etc. It's all in our mind or brain--we have a penchant for recognizing, with the faintest of stimulus from the environment, the likeness of our fellow humans....We are quick to see simulacra of human faces because we are predisposed to perceive them. Carl Sagan tells us that recognizing human faces is "hardwired in our brains" and that

"...the pattern-recognition machinery in our brains is so efficient in extracting a face from a clutter of other detail that we sometimes see faces where there are none. We assemble disconnected patches of light and dark and unconsciously try to see a face."

-snip-
Our species has a tendency to make sense of the environment and find patterns therein even where there is none. Howard Margolis tells us that

"...the brain has a bias favoring seeing something rather than nothing, so that it tends to jump to a pattern that makes sense of a situation. Hence, even if there is no pattern objectively there it tries to impute one."

-snip-
The drawbacks of pareidolia come to fore when the face is that of a prominent personality of one's religion since "believers tend quickly to deduce the hand of God" in these simulacra, deeming them to be apparitions of the divine. And so when Mary and Jesus "appear," they elicit much public attention, prompting a pilgrimage of sorts to the apparition sites. The supernatural is believed to have manifested in the profane, and so what was merely mundane is now considered sacred.

http://web.tri-isys.com/egtan/hokum/pareidolia.html

Another article that mentions non-Christian "sightings"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_pareidolia

Both articles include lists from stories that made their way into the newspapers over the last couple of decades.

[qnr]

19. I wish that too. Mostly though, I wish I knew how to pronounce pareidolia. n/t

[Doondoo]

24. good find - nt

[frogcycle]

20. "Virgin Mary image draws throngs"

when i first read that headline, i thought it said "thongs"


:rofl:

[InternalDialogue]

21. What's the deal with religious visions like this?

Why are the Virgin Mary and Jesus always looking beatific or serene in these things? Doesn't anyone ever find an image of Jesus cleaning camel shit off his sandals?

Where's the toaster that will produce a likeness of the Virgin Mary pulling carrots?

[Left Is Write]

22. Are they going to use that pan now to make toasted cheese sandwiches?

[saltpoint]

28. If they do I want one.

Toasted cheese sandwiches are so yummy.

[dropkickpa]

23. Looks like the outline of a

prostate stimulating buttplug. Catholics are weird (my family is catholic, so I know this is fact!). Why is it only catholics in the south see mary everywhere? Does she hate the cold?

[Chan790]

25. What makes them think the VM wants

to hang out on baking pans, streaky windows, toasted cheese sammiches, taters, highway underpasses,...

Note that she never shows up at Spring Break, Mardi Gras or Acapulco. There is no God there...apparently.

[Robeson]

26. The Lord works in mysterious ways. He very well may be....

...using baking pans to deliver his message....:rofl:

[pinniped]

27. Don't they have to reimburse someone for the pan not being in service?

Enquiring minds want to know.

How come no one ever sees the four evangelists, St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John?

Well, at least three of them can be easily seen:

- angel
- lion
- bull
- eagle

[kedrys]

30. That happens to me all the time

The water in some parts of Houston is phenomenally hard. Leaves all kinds of pretty pitchurs on the cookie sheets. :P

[bleedingheart]

31. I look at this as keeping up the traditions of the Church

throughout the history of the Roman Catholic Church...there have been shrines set up for the faithful...the dismembered remains of saints, their earthly possessions...etc

Some churchs are built upon what is supposedly true pieces of the cross or some saint's big toe or liver.

Is it funny...yes...but it is unique to us..and so I embrace it.

When I was a kid, I loved to go to church with my father because the church I went to had beautiful stained glass windows, religious icons and all kinds of stuff to stare at...

When I visited my husband's church when we were dating...it was a very strict protestant church...and it felt sterile inside. The lack of anything feminine bothered me too...