If I lived on a farm in Wisconsin I'd probably have a big imagination, too:

http://www.dollbox.com/usrimage/28080.jp…

i saw jesus in my french toast at denny's this morning , i think we need to print up some t shirts , and set up a ticket line for all the people who will flock here for the miracle apparition . i better tweet this right away so every one can get here before the dish washer washes the plate .

I will never understand.

That Mary sure does get around. What a slut.

She musta borrowed Tim Minchin's weave that day is all.

"officially validated by the Roman Catholic Church" reminds me of Bullwinkle's weather predicting abilities.

Jewish princess.

@7 Exactly. How can anyone take this bullshit seriously completely eludes me.

I wonder how she would have responded if Mary had told her to sexually assault every child she came across; or is that much the same thing as teaching children Catholic doctrine?

As I recall, veneration of Mary was originally an Eastern Orthodox fascination, coming only to Western Europe with the returning crusaders. It makes little sense any preference for Catholicism.

Also, reminds me of that scene of the religious charlatans from La Dolce Vita.

@9 Critical thinking is just not S.O.P. for humans. We had to invent scientific methodologies to combat our inherent ideological and sociological tendencies like pride and groupthink that can easily become barriers to accepting reality. C'mon FWA, you strike me as an intelligent enough bloke, ya gotta try to have more empathy for the sheep. Know thy enemy.

That title made me laugh way more than it probably should have.

Mmm, sheep. They're so tasty too.

Blond flowing locks. Hmmm, three guesses as to the race of Adele Brise...

It's the damndest thing how the gods of each culture just happen to physically resemble the people in the area that venerate them. You'd almost think that humans made them up in their image...

@4,9,11 It must be an evolutionary survival adaptation. I'm guessing group think was a way of consolidating a tribe to gird for war.

"Tangled" - the new film about Our Lady Of Good Help!

@15 It doesn't have to be just war, Vince. As Charles is always willing to say, we succeeded because we're such incredibly social animals. Whether it be building a shelter, gathering food, fighting off a threat, or a hundred other things, getting ourselves to cooperate is how we conquered the globe. And for sustained cooperation you need some shared beliefs to draw upon to get people to see things your way & actually do as you ask. Of course you could always just threaten people to do as you want, but actually winning someone over makes for a much more effective unit over the long haul.

"Full of grace! Full of grace!"

Shared beliefs?
You mean how medieval Christianity co-opted the pagan pantheon and transformed them into "acceptable" icons so they could expand both their congregations and their hold on the populace?
Never forget, the Gods of the old are the Demons of the new - except when convenient.

OK - I don't for a moment believe that this was an actual apparition of Jesus' mother. But I would throw out there, for the sake of argument - assuming that there is a God and we, as humans, are incapable of comprehending him/her/it in any sort of complete fashion, mightn't he/she/it manifest him/her/itself, and his/her/its messengers, in a form to which we can intrinsically relate? Particularly if the God or messenger in question was appearing to us through our minds - typical "vision" reports usually take the form of the "visited" being able to see something the rest of us cannot.

In other words, for a blond child in a Belgian immigrant community, knowing only other blond people, when her mind applies a "form" to the messenger she's experiencing it would probably be a blond woman.

Just because we know the actual mother of Jesus (assuming he was a real person) would have been a dark-haired Semitic woman doesn't mean she would necessarily appear that way in a vision after death. Although then, there is that whole bodily assumption thing to factor in.

well you'd have to believe that a 14 year old jewish girl had a "virgin" pregnancy to begin with, and that her 26 year old jewish boy friend had nothing to do with it. if you can get around that then the rest of the story is believeable

Actually, sorry, think that may have been me :/

@20, that's possible, of course, which is why we have apparitions of the Black Madonna, and similar things. But a Belgian farm girl, you say? Last time I went through Flanders, there were lots of dark-haired women around. I don't think there are any Belgian girls who ignore this existence. Why would god need to do that?

Of course, he might have done it on a whim ('there's a higher plan...'). So there: even if we don't know why he chose to let Mary be seen as a blonde, still he may have done it. Omnipotence can explain a lot, can't it?

Some things, like the Ouroboros, are definitely hard-wired into our brains. I don't think blonde Virgin Marys are, though.

Meh, I find it hard to get worked up over such things.

So perhaps some religious people of a certain mindset derive a little comfort and solace from thinking what they think about what is claimed to have happened there.

I've got no problem with people believing in apparitions of Mary or extraterrestrials with anal probes or little waving kitties that bring money to your business. Go nuts.

Just keep your deity from extending his noodly appendage into legislation and civil rights.

I'm with @21, once you've gotten past the hurdle of believing a 14 year old virgin girl gave birth to a god, who then died and resurrected so his sacrifice would allow him to forgive us for the sinful nature he himself instilled in us...well taking the step of believing in apparitions of Gods mom is a barely noticable increment in silliness.

This being the same Catholic Church that just recently decided that what the world needs now are more exorcists. You know, to cast out all those demons that hitch a ride with unsuspecting humans who projectile vomit green bile, spin their heads around backwards and spider-crawl up flights of stairs.

Maybe it's like the alien in Contact which took the form of Jodie Foster's father? Adele wouldn't have been able to handle seeing the Virgin in its native form (you know, looking all Arabic and shit) so Mary changed her form to one more palatable to a modern white chick.

If dying one's hair blond is good enough for Eric in True Blood, it is surely good enough for the BVM.

@14: Brise's "race" has little to do with it. Belgian's aren't so blond compared to their Dutch cousins to the north; they're mousy at best, due to the French/Mediterranian admixture. Her culture, however, would have much greater emphasis on her delusion, since the Belgians and especially the French fetishize blondness-as-purity/innocence precisely because they have lost it. Same goes for the Germans.

Ugh, as though we didn't have enough fundamentalist loonies in the not-Madison-Milwaukee-nor-Green-Bay majority land area of our state. Confirmed Mary-sighting AND a new arch-Neo-Conservative governor: it's gotta be a good Christmas for the reactionary half of Wisconsin. :-/

I think I'll console myself by tracking down the "Don't fuck with Wisconsin" t-shirt design, printing postcards, and mailing one to governor-to-be Walker every day until he leaves office.