The recent claim of a Eucharistic miracle at a church in Dallas has highlighted another phenomenon that has been asserted with increased frequency during recent times: that of "bleeding" Hosts, or at least Communion wafers that exhibit red coloration.

In recent years, such manifestations have been reported in Betania, Venezuela; in  Barbeau, Michigan (where a priest ordered to dispose of such a Host consumed it instead, and claimed it was actual flesh); in Piqua, Ohio, where Communion in water exhibited a large spot of red; in Rome, Italy; in Marlboro, New Jersey; near Salt Lake City, Utah (there, it was a chalice with a red droplet); in Worcester, Massachusetts; in Naju, Korea (to a seer who also had an alleged experience after receiving from John Paul II); and in California -- to name just those that readily come to mind.

Such claims go back at least to the eighth century, when a Communion Host in Lanciano, Italy, turned to flesh and blood -- a phenomenon that remains preserved in a church there, and that tests have shown to be the same AB blood type as in the Turin Shroud.

In the recent Dallas case, a Host had been disposed by a sick child in the restroom of a local church and then placed in water, where it developed a striking bright redness that some took to be blood and that proceeded to cause a brief sensation [below, left].

The operative word was "brief" because just days after the first reports in March, an analysis conducted by Dr. Marcy Brown Marsden, chairman and associate professor of biology, University of Dallas, and Dr. Frank Doe of the same department, at the request of Bishop Charles Grahmann, determined that the red was caused by fungal and bacterial colonies.

“From this conclusion the phenomenon was of the natural order and contains nothing of a supernatural nature," noted Bishop Grahmann in a March 23 letter to the pastor of the parish, St. James. "Thus, you need to remove yourself from any further activity surrounding this matter and its exaggerated claims."

The case hearkened not only to the Barbeau event, where the bishop there too said that it was fungus, but to a highly similar event in Peterborough, Ontario, where a priest named Father Heffernan who has been active in alleged Marian phenomena discovered on Christmas Eve of 1993 that a glass of water in which three Hosts had been placed to dissolve them (after elderly to whom he had been administering them were unable to swallow them, over the course of several months) had developed a strange red spot below the water line.

When the "spot" was examined by a chemistry professor at Trent University, the conclusion was similar: that the red was caused by a fungus, although the scientist was baffled, according to the priest, as to the red color. Witnesses asserted that in some slides the spot looked like a heart and that they saw an "unmistakable" white cross and other images.

The Canadian priest then flew to Florida, where he brought the specimen for examination by a biophysicist and entomologist named Dr. Phil Callahan, a devout Catholic who said that "the red stain did indeed turn out to be a fungus. Under the microscope a red mycelium could be seen spreading out in radial fashion from the center of the organism. A mycelium is a fine mass of interwoven threads that form the vegetative portion of the fungus."

Continued the scientist (who recites the Rosary): "It is well known that the threads of fungus contain many substances of various kinds, such as crystals of calcium oxalate, resins, protein granules, and most important of all, in the case of this specimen, different colored oil drops, e.g. green, yellow, or red. The latter," he concluded, "accounts for the red color of the Eucharistic mold."

Still, Dr. Callahan remained perplexed over aspects of the sample and was not convinced -- despite the clear evidence of fungus -- that it was merely a natural event. "Skeptics will ask, how one could consider a reddish mold a miracle or a sign from God," he wrote. "They are unfamiliar with what St. Augustine said about nature and God's earthly messages. In our opinion what the incident of the spreading hyphae of mycelium and the formation of a heart-shaped mold says to those of a spiritual mind is, 'God is talking back to us.' It is astonishing that a blood-red heart should form in a glass, but even more fascinating is the fact that directly over the heart was a perfect cross."

The doctor felt that the odds of all the various circumstances, including the way the Host found its way to him, and could be analyzed when it was, were on the order of "billions to one."

We'll leave it all for your own determination. Would the Lord use something as seemingly ordinary and unpalatable as fungus?

At a time when images are seen everywhere, we have repeatedly urged caution, at the same time that we have maintained openness to the notion that God can speak whenever and however He desires. It is a time when "holy" images are claimed in everything from sandwiches to tabletops.

Some seem silly. Some seem unpalatable. The claims, true or untrue, are rampant.

The instances of actual blood in Eucharistic miracles, as at Lanciano, remain phenomenal -- and incomprehensible. Indeed, in the Piqua, Ohio, event, which is in the Cincinnati archdiocese, it was reported that the Host there too looked like flesh and that, ten years later, it's still being kept by a priest who is under an order of secrecy from the bishop.

If true, how could such really occur? And if nothing else, how could Lanciano be what it is -- withstanding centuries of scrutiny?

"There are several sections in St. Augustine's 'City of God' where he points out that miracles are temporal -- that is, of this world," says Dr. Callahan. "The most notable is where he states: 'Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known in nature.'"

4/10/06

originally published as eucharistmiracledallasfolo

[resources: Joan Carroll Cruz's Eucharistic Miracles]

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