Kewly enough, I noticed that my humble post on "Our Lady of the Underpass" has been picked up elsewhere. However, not all readers of this blog have yet picked up on the distinction that JimmyAkin.org is currently a group blog, so my post was mistakenly attributed to Jimmy. James White of Alpha & Omega Ministries writes:
"And finally, Dave Armstrong saw my note on Mary stains, and has fulfilled my wildest dreams by telling his fellow Catholics to get a grip (a little paraphrase there). Thank you Mr. Armstrong. Now, if you could be so kind as to go down to Chicago and try that out in front of all those folks lighting candles, I’d like to see their reaction. Or, how about cleaning the stain off the wall while explaining that? Yes, that would be interesting. But maybe Armstrong will comment on this amazing comment cited by Jimmy Akin about the same ‘stains.’"
[White here cites the original post. His editorial comment: "Um … yeah, wow. OK."]
Since the post has garnered a bit of controversy, even within the comments section of my post itself, I decided that a bit of clarification would be helpful:
The commenter I cited, a reader of Relapsed Catholic, implicitly agreed that the stains on the wall in question are just that, stains. As one reader of my post pointed out, when Mary actually appears, she simply appears. In all true apparitions, it’s really Mary, not an image in toast, oil, or any other material thing:
"These things ARE NOT MARY. They are nothing, just shadows, oil slicks, water stains. Our Lady NEVER appears IN something, IN some medium. She simply APPEARS. I am really sick of these stories, they really get my goat. Don’t these people know ANYTHING about verified Marian appearances? Rant over. For now" (emphasis is the reader’s).
(As a quick side note, even the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, miraculously impressed on St. Juan Diego’s tilma, is just that: An image. It was an image given as a sign to verify the reality of the apparitions given to St. Juan Diego himself.)
The distinction the person I quoted was trying to make, a distinction with which I agreed, is that it is in line with a genuinely Catholic piety to consider shapes vaguely similar to Mary to be images — icons, if you will — of Mary placed within creation. If such shapes are indeed placed within creation, then God does it; something Relapsed Catholic’s commenter states whimsically by attributing the deed to the Child Jesus scribbling pictures of Mommy.
The Catholic worldview is an inherently sacramental and incarnational worldview. Because Catholics experience God spiritually through the physical reality of the sacraments, it is natural for them to instinctively see God’s hand at work in the physical order of things. That sacramental experience of God enables Catholics to draw more deeply from the reality of the Incarnation than might non-sacramental Christians who only experience God cerebrally. Thus, Catholics can draw connections that might otherwise horrify non-sacramental Christians. "Our Lady of the Underpass" is one example.
As another example, I once read a book on St. Joseph which quoted a Catholic saying that he especially loved St. Joseph because St. Joseph taught God how to be a man. When I first read that, I loved the idea but realized that this was a deeply Catholic sentiment that might well repulse Protestant Fundamentalists. It’s not because they would disagree that Joseph was entrusted by God to raise and rear Jesus Christ; it’s because they have not deeply pondered, as Catholics have over many centuries, what it means for God to have chosen to become a man. What it means that he chose to enter humanity as a baby rather than as a man full-grown. The repulsion would be the first instinct, the pious Christian reaction that it is impossible for man to teach God anything, even, to a certain extent, how to be a man. It would take deeper reflection to realize that there is nothing wrong with saying that Christ’s earthly father taught him some of what it means to be a man, just as human fathers do for human sons.
Getting back to the original point: In short, yes, designs that appear to resemble Mary should not be mistaken for "apparitions" around which followings presumably develop. At best, such natural designs of sacred images are natural icons open to interpretation by others who may see other, non-sacred designs in them. Just like icons, such images should not be worshipped, but if they point the person onward to Mary and through her to Christ, neither should they be condemned. (And, in distinction to sacred icons, which should be treated with the reverence due such icons, there would be nothing wrong with eating a "Marian" grilled-cheese sandwich or scrubbing a "Marian" oil slick from a wall.)
Those non-sacramental Christians critiquing the Catholic reaction to such images should at least remember that the Catholic worldview is finely attuned to seeing the supernatural within the natural creation of God. Such Christians may not understand the conclusions Catholic draw from such a sensitivity to creation, but should at least be able to agree that it expresses a genuine Christian sentiment that all creation (which includes sandwiches and oil slicks), of which Christ is the firstborn, was created in Christ and for Christ, and thus gives glory to him (cf. Col. 1:15-16).