There was a statue in Sacramento, CA which was reported in the news to be weeping blood -- this wss being hailed as a miracle by some, as fakery by others, and was carefully studied by the Church. (The whole ting dropped out of the news after a week)

 Catholics seem to have better luck with miracles, or perhaps just better imaginations.  We take the supernatural seriously, and live with it all the time.

    First of all -- bottom line -- Miracles don't matter.  They are not central to the Faith.

   Whether it is a fake or real blood coming from the statue is not going to change anything in Scripture or Christian belief.  It may affect individuals, enlivening and strengthening their personal faith, but it is not going to affect Christianity as a whole.

    The Church recognizes two sorts of Revelation:

       1)   General Revelation
       2)   Personal Revelation

 . . . and General trumps Personal every time.

General Revelation

    This is the body of teaching received from Jesus and the Apostles, and all declarations of General Revelation ended with the death of John the Evangelist, the last surviving Apostle, in about 100 A.D.  General Revelation is:

             a)   Complete -- all that is necessary to salvation is contained in it -- Scripture, Tradition, and Dogma.
             b)   Public --  all that is necessary to salvation is publicly available in Scripture and Tradition.  There are no secret short-cuts.

    That we continue to interpret General Revelation, as we do the Scriptures, makes no difference -- what we find or add must harmonize with what the Apostles taught and thought.  People are always coming  up with new things -- and we are required to judge them by what the Apostles and their successors, down to the present,  taught and teach.

    There is a certain type of mind (widely found in pre-teenage males) which dearly loves conspiracies and secret societies.  There are any number of "secret masters" peddling all sort so religious snake oil, with ideas about how to get into Heaven "on the cheap" or by the back door.  One of the recent ones was the "Prayer of Jabez" which went around in Protestant circles in the early 21st Century -- it is a rather tacky whine, asking God to give Jabez  what he is supposedly owed.  It shows no devotion to God, no depth of spirit, just a bald "gimme".

    Gnostics and {Mumble}sophists also peddle arcane and occult paths to hidden knowledge and revelations.  All of their paths have a certain obsessiveness to them -- incredibly detailed attention to trivia and imaginary beings -- which does not leave them time or energy to do well by their neighbors, as Jesus commanded.  The true Church is very public about all she does and teaches.  Fakers cloak themselves in mystery.

Personal Revelation

  . . . is just that:  an idea or vision that comes to an individual person.  It is NOT  something received by the whole Church.  It is NOT something added to existing belief.

    Christianity has a rich tradition of miracles, going back into Old Testament times, and continuing to the present.  Normally impossible things happen -- healings, levitation, apports, you name it.  People get visited by saints and angels, and learn things they would not ordinarily have been able to know.

    These things are reported in every human culture, and from every country, around the globe.  What they mean, and how they happen are subjects for endless debate.  Without carefully controlled and repeatable conditions, we can only shrug and say that there is a vast body of narrative on the subject, but no scientific data.

    The Church takes a similar position -- that things do, indeed happen -- but judges them in terms of how they reflect the Faith and affect the faithful.  Lourdes -- http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09389b.htm -- is one such miraculous happening.

    At first disapproved, it was only four years later, in 1862, that the bishop of the diocese declared the faithful "justified in believing the reality of the apparition".  The theological reason for the approval was the support the words of the Apparition gave to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, promulgated in Ineffabilis Deus on 8 December, 1854 -- the apparition supported established teachings.

    Beyond that, there have been countless healings at the shrine -- most carefully certified by medical specialists.  How do they happen?  Nobody knows.  But people still flock to the shrine, and are still healed.  It serves as a source of comfort to the faithful, and does not contradict Revelation.

    None the less, everyone is free to accept the miracles and apparitions and "locutions", if it helps them to reinforce their piety and faith.  They are equally free to disregard them.

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    So -- my attitude about the statue in Sacramento crying tears of blood is a firm "Yeah, maybe". 

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