Medjugorje on a scientific and academic level by Ministry Values -interesting.

This morning I will go trough my mails before leaving the house... It is so many people in Medjugorje so I have less and less time for computer . I just have to take care of the real work... LOL :-) Recent visitors we had from Argentina. Mrs Maria who is organizing the pilgrimages from that country had some interesting comments about how to actually prepare the people for the pilgrimage so that they have the most of the Medjugorje experience. She is now preparing a book which will have the testimonies of the local people not the pilgrims. I will write about that on other occasion.
I had an interesting talk with Marijana (locutio cordis), about the above subject as well as about how to form a prayer group.  I  have to write about that too...
All the spare time is spent with my children as they are the most important in the world. Easter is coming so cakes, cookies, eggs, lunch planning are in focus. Of course they(my children) want to be much involved with the preparations so it is a lot of fun (and mess to clean afterwards :-) )  .............

Here is a small part of a much bigger article which I have found quite interesting to read with my morning coffee. Enjoy it in full at the original site (link below the text)

Thus, at Medjugorje, for the first time in human history, neuroscience and medical examination have played an instrumental role in penetrating the interior depths of mysticism by combining scientific inquiry with spiritual experience, thus elucidating our knowledge of the subject with empirical examination of the visionaries’ ecstasies. As the French doctor Henri Joyeux, an internationally renowned physician and Professor of Cancerology in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montpellier, explained in regard to the timely significance of the apparitions:

“Ecstasy is seen as a sensory perception of realities that are perceivable by and visible to the visionaries but invisible to and imperceivable by all others and, in particular, those who seek to understand. For the first time in history science can study these facts as they unfold in Medjugorje and not merely a posteriori. The most advanced medical techniques and the most up-to-date photographic and cinematographic techniques help us to reach the kernel of these events in order to try to understand them.”

This is much different from Oliver Sacks’ neurological reductionism, which applied no empiricism to the study of mysticism whatsoever but simply postulated that mystical experience cannot be authentic by offering neurological euphemisms for the experiences of medieval visionaries. The Medjugorje visionaries, on the other hand, have been tested for all of the natural symptoms which are usually applied by skeptics to discredit mystical experience, thus undermining reductionist theories against the apparitions. Dr. Joyeux led a team of French physicians from the University of Montpelier to examine the Medjugorje seers in ecstasy during their daily apparitions of the Virgin, when the visionaries simultaneously fall to their knees and enter an ecstatic state, which has the appearance of a trance. This phenomenon takes place daily at the same time (5:45 pm in the winter and 6:45 pm in the summer). Dr. Joyeux’s concluding report, delivered in the spring of 1985, stated: “The ecstasies are not pathological, nor is there any element of deceit. No scientific discipline seems able to describe these phenomena.” He explained that “these young people are healthy and there is no sign of epilepsy, nor is it a sleep or dream state. It is neither a case of pathological hallucination nor hallucination in the hearing or sight faculties…It cannot be a cataleptic state, for during ecstasy the facial muscles are operating in a normal way.” Through meticulous examination and investigation, the scientific studies have been able to disqualify all possible alternative, natural explanations for the apparitions.................

PLEASE READE FULL TEXT AT ORIGINAL BLOG 

God bless you all!