Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #391: Lourdes, Miracles and M‑Theory: When Science Meets the Supernatural

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Being Catholic #391: Lourdes, Miracles and M‑Theory: When Science Meets the Supernatural · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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We're going to have a great show for you today. I'm here with my wife,
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Lynn, and always we're brought to you by you.
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And we're going to talk a little bit today about M-theory, and we'll learn a
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little bit more about what M-theory is as we go along.
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It's sort of, I think, a fun program today, something a little bit different.
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And we'll be talking about Lourdes, and we're talking about Bernadette's visions
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of the Virgin Mary and how that might be possible, and maybe a little bit more,
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and we'll explain it as we go along.
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As I said, I'm here with my wife, Lynn. Before we start, I'll turn this over
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to her and see what she has to say.
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Hello. Glad to be here with you again this Saturday.
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And this is going to be the weekend that the church calendar changes.
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The beginning of the new church year will begin next Sunday.
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Not tomorrow, next Sunday. Day. This is the Feast of Christ the King,
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which was established by a conservative pope that was concerned about the socialist,
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communist takeover in the modernism in the church.
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And he wanted to remind everybody, Christ is King.
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So that's why we have this feast day. And it marks the end of the liturgical year.
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So Advent will start in a week.
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That's four Sundays before Christmas.
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Time's going by pretty fast. And the other thing I'd like to do is to thank you all.
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We did meet our goal for the fall drive, the funding drive, and we appreciate that.
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Needed it, and it was by the skin of our teeth, but you guys came through,
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and we really do appreciate it.
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So, Bob, you're going to take me on a journey today to another galaxy.
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Well, maybe not so much to another galaxy as another dimension.
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Yeah. So this is what we're going to talk about. And I'm glad you did mention
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the fact that so many of our listeners helped us with our fundraising.
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And we did meet our goals. And as you say, we're very, very thankful for that and appreciate it.
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I do also want to mention we won't be here next Saturday, so,
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you know, our show will resume after that because of Thanksgiving.
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And we want to wish everybody out there coming up here a happy Thanksgiving
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and Thanksgiving weekend.
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Safe one. And a safe one and, you know, don't eat too much turkey.
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Well, if you do, you fall asleep, they say.
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Yeah, we're going to talk here about this article, Our Lady of Lords and M Theory.
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And we'll get into this as we go along, what M-Theory is. And it's an article
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written by Joseph Lewis Heil.
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And he is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
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He's the author of two novels, The War Less Civil and Judas in Jerusalem,
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and also a collection of miscellaneous writings titled The Universal Heart.
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And he resides in suburban Milwaukee. And if you want to read the article,
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you'll find it in the New Oxford Review, the November 2025 issue, the New Oxford Review.
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So we'll get into this. And I think it's very interesting. It might explain
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other phenomena that go on as well.
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And one of the things to remember, I think, and I've said it before,
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is that there are more things in the universe, Horatio, than your philosophy has dreamt of.
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And we get that from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and it certainly is true.
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Our universe is a very strange and wonderful place, and the earth itself,
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a very strange and wonderful place in its own right.
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And there are more things in it than we know about. and to be skeptic about
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everything is to overlook the wonders that might be and probably will be as
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time goes on and we learn more.
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It starts here, it says, Two authors, somewhat similar in literary stature in
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Europe and the United States,
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wrote about the remarkable story of a mid-19th century provincial French girl
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named Bernadette Saborius.
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The Czech-born Franz Werfel recounted the true tale in novel form,
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while the French novelist Michael de Saint-Pierre, I'm not sure how he pronounced these names,
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wrote it as an investigative journalist.
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Werfel's lyrical novel, The Song of Bernadette, became a national bestseller.
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Spending 13 weeks atop the New York Times prestigious list.
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Two years later, it was made into a motion picture of the same name,
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attaining tremendous popularity and winning four of the eight Academy Awards
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for which it was nominated, including Best Picture.
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It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture.
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A decade later, de Saint-Pierre, a prolific Catholic novelist,
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wrote a thoroughly researched biography of Mademoiselle Suburius titled Bernadette and Lords.
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It was first published in Paris in 1952.
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The splendid English translation by Edward Fitzgerald,
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glowing with luminous and faith-affirming prose was published in 1954 and was
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followed by a paperback edition a year later.
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Regrettably, both the hardcover and the paperback editions have been out of print for many years.
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De St. Pierre's far more accurate account never attained the popular,
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that is, commercial, success that Werfel's novel did, although it was as deserving, perhaps more so.
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Whereas The Song of Bernadette revealed the novelist's freedom...
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To liberate his expansive and rich imagination to create scenes and dialogue,
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albeit plausible, among family members, friends, civil authorities,
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and important clerics of the time,
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de Saint-Pierre cited only the original, authentic transcripts that those same
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authorities had faithfully recorded as well as, most importantly,
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the writings of Bernadette herself and the many depositions she was forced to give.
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An example illustrating Werfel's literary license and historical inaccuracy
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involves the Buhu-Hortz family,
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if I'm pronouncing that right, whom he places in the house next door to the
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Saboriuses, with the wives as dear friends.
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The Buhu-Hortz have but one child, a sickly, deformed two-year-old boy,
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who is subject to convulgence.
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Bernadette's mother, Luis, who has a reputation for uncommon medical ability,
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is the only one who can calm the convulsed child.
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Doctors agree that he is too weak to live.
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As a matter of fact, this family was completely unknown to the Saboriuses.
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De Saint-Pierre writes, in Lourdes there lived a day-laborer named Jean Buchohortz,
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note the different spelling, and it is a different spelling, and his wife Croisine.
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Together with their two-year-old child, a puny and a linforn little creature,
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already suffering from a decline, practically at the point of death.
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I cite this not to criticize Werfel, but merely to note one of many discrepancies
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between the two authors' accounts.
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Both writers go on to tell of the miraculous curing of the child when his mother
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immerses him in icy cold water for a quarter of an hour,
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the fifth miraculous healing at the Massabille Grotto near the Pyrenean town of Lourdes.
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Thousands have occurred since.
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A more egregious warful fabrication occurs later in the novel after civil authorities
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have closed the grotto as a public nuisance in the summer of 1858.
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Werfel writes that the Emperor Louis Napoleon's young son, Lulu,
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is healed of severe illness by drinking a glass of Lourdes water.
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In De St. Pierre's biography, the second of only two mentions of the Emperor,
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says that, quote, at the beginning of October, the Emperor went to Biarrise
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for the season and high personages at court conveyed the people's dissatisfaction
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with the barricading of the grotto.
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Wisely, the emperor rescinded his decree. The large grotto has remained open ever since.
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It is not my intent to compare the many instances in which Werfel's fanciful
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fictions stray far from factual truths.
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A decade after the tremendous success of the Song of Bernadette,
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De Saint-Pierre had this to say about Werfel's astonishing inventions.
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They are all figments of Werfel's over-vivid imagination.
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I do not question the honesty of the man's intentions.
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But it does seem to me that ordinary respect for truth and simple honesty should
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forbid any self-respecting author to indulge in the systematic distortion of
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historical facts to suit his own ends.
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Let that serve to remind students and scholars not to search romantic historical
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novels for hard historical facts.
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And I think the Heil here puts this in in the beginning just to let the skeptics
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know that he knows that in the more romantic story that made the movie and so
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forth about Bernadette,
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that there are some discrepancies from the real historical facts.
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But that doesn't distort or detract from what actually happened there.
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And that's why I think he's putting this introduction here in to make sure that
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he knows there's a difference between the two different reports.
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One is very, very factual, sticking strictly to the exact words that were reported
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by the authorities that investigated the whole thing.
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And the other is one that was turned into a novel where the person that wrote
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the novel took some liberties.
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But he understands that the difference between the two doesn't really throw
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any doubt on what actually happened there. So that's what's going on here.
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And that's why all of that introduction, I think, was necessary.
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He goes on and he says, Allow me to encapsulate the story.
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Innocent and pure, Bernadette, at age fourteen, was thus chosen,
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by the mightiest power in the universe, to have not visions,
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but real human encounters with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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From February 11 to July 16, 1858, there occurred eighteen meetings between
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one supremely immaculate virgin and one simple poor and lowly virgin,
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resulting in the flowing forth of a spring to which millions have pilgrimaged
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and by which thousands have been cured.
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On January 14th,
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On January 18, 1862.
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Monsignor Bertrand Lawrence, Bishop of Tarbes, issued a decree that cites three
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criteria that formally confirm that the Blessed Virgin Mary did indeed appear to Bernadette. 1.
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Reliability of the Seer Bernadette's testimony was so consistent,
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earnest, and compelling that both clerical and civil authorities found it difficult to doubt her.
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They tried to trick and trap her in grueling depositions, but her recounting
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of the apparitions never varied or wavered.
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Two, spiritual fruits. Besides sanctifying Bernadette.
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Processions and pilgrimages revived the theological virtues of faith,
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hope, and charity in the hearts of those who came to the grotto and greatly
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renewed their devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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And three, cures of the body. Between 1858 and 1862, hundreds of cures were
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examined by leading physicians and scientists.
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Seven were proclaimed miraculous.
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That is, no medical or scientific explanation of the cure was known.
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In 1883, Fr. Rémi Sempé, the first rector of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, commissioned Dr.
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Georges Fernand du Nott of de Saint-Macleau to establish the Bureau of Medical Observations,
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so that no one who thought he had been cured would depart Lourdes without submitting
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his medical history and the story of his cure to a thorough and rigorous medical assessment.
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Decades later, in 1947, Monsire.
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Pierre-Marie Theus, Bishop of Tarbes in Lourdes, and Dr.
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François Leray, then President of the Bureau, launched the Lourdes Medical Committee
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to recruit doctors and scientists with excellent reputations in their respective
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fields of specialization.
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In 1954, Bishop Theus urged the committee to acquire an international character.
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Thus, members of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes are charged
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with assessing and certifying, if they can,
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that a cure which had been declared unexplained by the Bureau of Medical Observations
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is indeed unexplainable, that is, miraculous, on the basis of current medical
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and scientific knowledge.
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And we'll go ahead and stop here.
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So stay with us. We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic
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Prayer for the Canonization of Archbishop Fulton J.
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Sheen. Written by Monsignor Richard Sosman. Heavenly Father,
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women who serve with heroic love and dedication.
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You have blessed Your Church through the life and ministry of Your faithful
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servant, Archbishop Fulton J.
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Sheen. He has written and spoken well of Your Divine Son, Jesus Christ,
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and was a true instrument of the Holy Spirit in touching the hearts of countless people.
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If it be according to Your will, for the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity
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and the salvation of souls, we ask you to move the church to proclaim him a saint.
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We ask this prayer through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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We're back from our break. We're talking about Our Lady of Lords and M-Theory,
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an article by Joseph Lewis Heil.
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Can recent scientific developments explain supernatural phenomena?
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And we're reading from that article. And it goes on to say, Faceless minds crave signs.
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Prideful minds demand them. Even the beauty and magnificence of our planet and
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universe are insufficient for faceless and prideful persons to acknowledge God's existence,
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majesty, and power, let alone the truths of the Catholic faith.
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And yet, through God's generosity and love, the grotto at Lourdes and its ever-flowing
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spring, approximately 25,000 gallons a day since 1858, with its miraculous cures,
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are a living, healing, and perpetual sign of God's kindness toward an errant,
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sinful, and ever-wandering world.
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Right from the beginning, however, arrogant skeptics, free thinkers,
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atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers dismissed the verifiable and overwhelming
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scientific evidence of the many unexplained cures at Lourdes.
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De Saint-Pierre tells of a meeting in 1952 at which he raised the problem of
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Lourdes in the presence of skeptical medical men.
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In spite of his referencing prominent scientific and medical evidence of the
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cures at Lourdes, it became obvious to him that they had no interest in the documented facts,
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revealing instead a vehemently negative attitude, an obstinacy that astonished him.
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We can presume in 2025 that such obstinacy firmly exists in the minds of our
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contemporary skeptics,
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freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers, who regrettably share the
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same closed-mindedness as the men de Saint-Pierre encountered 73 years ago.
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Secularists prefer to remain stuck in the muck of a materialism that rejects
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all supernatural phenomena, foolish believing themselves to be enlightened.
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Let us return to the actual, unusual, and convincing events that occurred on Thursday.
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February 25, 1858, when eyewitnesses observed Bernadette's peculiar behavior
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during her encounter with the lady, as Bernadette always referred to her.
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At first, the child moved toward the River Gave, but she then turned toward
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the grotto and went to a specific spot.
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There, she bent down and began to scrape the dry earth.
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As de Saint-Pierre writes, the small cavity she hollowed out with her hands
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filled with muddy water.
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She then drank from it and washed her face.
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She also plucked a blade or two of grass that was growing there and put it to her mouth.
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In Bernadette's words, the lady had said, go and drink and wash yourself at
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the spring and eat the green you will find growing there.
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The crowds at the grotto that day hoped to see something miraculous.
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They did indeed, but they failed to recognize or realize it.
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Many thought Bernadette had gone mad.
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Why would a simple-minded child, a slow learner especially of her catechism,
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behave in such an odd manner?
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Her distraught, protective parents certainly did not instruct her to perform such unpleasant acts.
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Neither did her schoolmates, nor were there any such repugnant urgings from
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bystanders in the crowd, and Bernadette certainly was not impelled by her own
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innocent imagination to do such strange and distasteful things.
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Quite obviously, she was obeying a highly specific command from someone she
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dared not disobey, Someone she alone vividly saw and clearly heard.
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Someone more real than all the others who surrounded her.
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Then, quietly, came the miracle. De Saint-Pierre writes,
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The next day, the stream, which had suddenly welled up at the dry spot where
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Bernadette had scraped, was producing about 25,000 gallons of water every 24
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hours, running freely into the gavi.
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Happily, those waters continue flowing to this day, and to this day miraculous cures still occur.
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The Catholic Church professes as dogma that the Blessed Mother Mary,
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who upon repeated pleadings from Bernadette finally gave her name as the Immaculate Conception,
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was conceived without the stain of original sin.
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That woman, who bore Jesus Christ, was born more than 1,800 years prior to Bernadette's
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encountering her as a beautiful, living, and breathing young lady.
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How could that possibly be?
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That is a far more difficult question than questioning the many miraculous cures
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that have occurred at Lourdes.
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The Church also professes as dogmas that Mary was assumed into heaven and that
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the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, ascended into heaven based on eyewitness testimony.
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How can these dogmas possibly be reconciled with the physical sciences?
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Within the context of the Catholic faith, believers accept these things as actual,
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though not verifiable, facts.
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Nevertheless, nevertheless, perhaps clues to answer those bewildering questions
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might be found in all the wonders that science has discovered in the latter
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decades of the past century and which continue to the present time.
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Secular universities and medical institutions have
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rigorously studied the many near-death and out-of-body experiences reported
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by thousands since the Swiss American psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross published
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her seminal findings in On Death and Dying in 1969.
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A widely respected text.
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More recently, in the May 2022 issue of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
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a multidisciplinary team of scientists and physicians, led by Samuel Parnia,
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Director of Critical Care and Resuscitation Research at New York University
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Grossman School of Medicine, published a peer-reviewed consensus statement in which they conclude,
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that evidence suggests that neither physiological nor cognitive processes end with death.
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The many recorded, verified, and study instances of near-death experiences confirm
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the existence of a transphysical human soul that not only survives death by
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vacating the confines of the human body,
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but also possesses intelligence, memory, and the abilities of sight, hearing, and speech.
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The answer to the question, is there conscious life after death, is a resounding yes.
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That brings us to M-theory, a theory in physics that unifies in a single mathematical
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structure all five consistent versions of string theory.
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String theory is itself a fairly recent conjecture of theoretical physics,
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becoming prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s as a way to explain the world in which
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we live by suggesting that the smallest elements of matter and energy,
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even smaller than the tiniest subatomic particles discovered by CERN's Large
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Hadron Collider in Bern, Switzerland,
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are looped, vibrating strings that give the atomic and subatomic particles their mass and energy.
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To appreciate M-theory, some historical context is necessary.
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In the early decades of the 20th century, three theories became dominant in theoretical physics.
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Einstein's special theory of relativity, his general theory of relativity, and quantum theory.
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The latter was first proposed in 1900 by the German physicist Max Planck.
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It attempts to explain, in mathematical terms, the fantastically unpredictable
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behavior of atomic and subatomic particles.
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By the end of the 1920s, quantum mechanics had been fully developed by Niels
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Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Paul Dirac, and others.
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All three theories have been experimentally confirmed.
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Einstein recognized the obvious
29:03
conflict between his general theory of relativity and quantum theory.
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The former is a gravity theory that explains the large-scale workings of the universe.
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The latter, a probability theory that explains the workings of the atomic and
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subatomic world. The mathematics of the two are incompatible,
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firmly settled in dramatic opposition.
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Einstein believed such a conflict was inconsistent with divine creation,
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causing him to spend the last thirty years of his life searching for the so-called
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unified field theory, to reconcile the two in one grand underlying principle.
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Now, 70 years after Einstein's death,
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theoretical physicists have come to realize that M-theory might provide the
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framework to achieve the long-sought-after goal of unifying the very large in
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our universe with the very small.
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For that reason, it is often called the theory of everything,
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and I think also gut, G-U-T, the grand unification theory.
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M-theory is still being developed and refined by physicists and mathematicians around the world.
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Their work seeks to merge the five separate string theories along with a sixth
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theory, supergravity, that postulates an 11-dimension universe containing the
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three spatial dimensions we perceive.
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Seven concealed spatial dimensions that are curled up but have not yet been
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detected, and the one temporal dimension.
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In other words, the three dimensions we perceive would be, you You know,
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the plane dimensions, the straight line, and then all of the figures on a plane,
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P-L-A-N-E, you know, plane geometry, triangles, circles, and so forth, and lines.
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And then, of course, the solids, boxes and balls and things like that.
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And then, of course, the fourth dimension would be time. You know,
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we take a ball or a box or any solid object, and we move it from one place to
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another, and we get time.
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And those are the four dimensions that we know. We know the three dimensions
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and then the fourth dimension, the dimension of time.
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And they're saying that there are, besides those four dimensions,
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seven other dimensions curled up within those three and four dimensions.
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And that sometimes those dimensions can somehow uncurl into our three-dimensional universe.
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And we then are able to see or understand things that don't normally exist in
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the universe that we're familiar with.
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He goes, it says, much of the true nature of M-theory remains mysterious,
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writes the physicist Brian Greene in his book The Elegant Universe.
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Super Strings, Hidden Dimensions, and A Quest for the Ultimate Theory.
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Physicists worldwide are working with great vigor to acquire a full understanding
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of M-theory, and this may well constitute the central problem of 21st century physics.
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I would not dare attempt to offer an explanation of the transcendent theory
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written in the esoteric language of the highest mathematics.
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Rather, for the purpose of argument, it is sufficient merely to emphasize that
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M-theory envisions a universe with an additional seven curled-up hidden dimensions.
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A hint at the reality of a multidimensional universe was first devised by the
32:47
German mathematician Theodor Kaluza in 1919.
32:52
By applying a fourth spatial dimension to Einstein's general theory of relativity,
33:00
Calusa recognized that it provided an elegant and compelling framework for weaving
33:05
together general relativity and James Clark Maxwell's electromagnetic theory into a single,
33:16
unified conceptual framework.
33:19
Then, in 1926, the Swedish mathematician Oscar Klein,
33:26
proposed that the spatial fabric of our universe may have both extended and curled-up dimensions.
33:34
It is important at this point to remember that both the general theory of relativity
33:40
and Maxwell's theory were experimentally proven to be true and precise explanations
33:47
of the workings of our physical world.
33:50
As previously and briefly discussed, near-death and even out-of-body occurrences
33:56
have been widely accepted as authentic human experiences of individuals who,
34:03
in a transphysical, that is, incorporeal state,
34:09
retain their faculties of sight, hearing, intelligence, and speech,
34:13
as well as an unhindered freedom of movement.
34:16
In other words, incorporeal, meaning out of the body or non-bodily.
34:22
While out-of-body, these persons observed the happenings and events in our physical
34:28
world, though they could not be observed, that is, seen by the persons nearest
34:34
them who witnessed their clinical deaths.
34:37
Thus, it seems both obvious and plausible that the immaterial soul exists in
34:42
a dimension or dimensions beyond our sensory limitations, which are trapped, so to speak,
34:51
within three perceptible spatial ones.
34:53
Allow me to summarize in a speculative syllogism. A.
34:59
Scientifically verified out-of-body, that is,
35:03
transphysical experiences have occurred in what might be a higher-order spatial
35:10
dimensional reality that is imperceptible to living corporeal persons.
35:17
B, M-theory postulates that seven imperceptible spatial dimensions exist curled
35:26
up within the three extended spatial dimensions of the universe's space-time fabric. c.
35:35
Thus, out-of-body experiences might provide a degree of proof for a multidimensional
35:43
universe as postulated by M-theory.
35:48
So what in heaven's name does M-Theory have to do with Our Lady of Lourdes?
35:54
We're going to stop here and take a break, and we're going to come back,
35:57
and we'll talk about that.
35:58
So stay with us. We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic
36:01
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Prayer for the Canonization of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.
37:21
Written by Monsignor Richard Sosman Heavenly Father, Source of all holiness,
37:25
You raise up within the Church in every age men and women who serve with heroic love and dedication.
37:32
You have blessed Your Church through the life and ministry of Your faithful
37:35
servant, Archbishop Fulton J.
37:37
Sheen. He has written and spoken well of Your Divine Son, Jesus Christ,
37:42
and was a true instrument of the Holy Spirit in touching the hearts of countless people.
37:47
If it be according to Your will, for the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity
37:51
and the salvation of souls.
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We ask you to move the church to proclaim him a saint.
37:57
We ask this prayer through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
38:02
Hi, this is Bob Johnston. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
38:07
We're back from our break. We're talking about M-Theory and Our Lady of Lords,
38:13
and you're wondering perhaps exactly what M-Theory has to do with Our Lady of
38:18
Lords, and we're reading from an article that is talking about that,
38:21
and we're about, hopefully, to find that out.
38:25
And the article goes on. It says, When we consider apparitions of the beautiful
38:30
lady that Bernadette experienced,
38:33
is it not plausible that the 11-dimensional universe, postulated by M-theory,
38:40
might prefer a scientific explanation for how the Blessed Virgin Mary moved
38:48
in and out of the four-dimensional world of provincial France.
38:55
Either by God's will or her own.
38:58
Conversely, is it reasonable for those of us living almost two centuries after
39:03
the miraculous apparitions at Lourdes to suggest that Mary's appearances there,
39:09
as well as at Fatima, Portugal,
39:12
in 1917, might be metaphysical evidence in support of M-theory,
39:18
just as near-death and out-of-body experiences might be?
39:22
Catholic believers acknowledge the power and goodness of a loving God to deliver
39:28
messages to the world through apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
39:34
Ultimately, will it be science, and M-theory in particular.
39:40
That explains how our earthly, human experiences, including near-death and out-of-body
39:46
experiences, relate to the transcendent reality?
39:51
Thus answering the stupendous question of how these remarkable happenings have
39:56
occurred and will continue to occur?
39:59
Another perplexing issue must be addressed. How do human bodies of flesh and
40:04
blood, such as those of the Blessed Virgin Mary and our Lord Jesus Christ,
40:11
exist in this imperceptible, higher-order.
40:16
Multidimensional environment? And why are they imperceptible since they are
40:22
spatial beings in our universe, which comprises three extended spatial dimensions?
40:29
Why, for example, was Our Lady of Lourdes visible only to Bernadette and not
40:37
to the yearning crowds that surrounded her?
40:40
The answers seem far beyond human understanding and presently beyond scientific
40:46
explanation, though I doubt science will ever have all the answers because God's
40:51
universe is simply too rich with divine mystery.
40:55
So what really happened at Lourdes? I offer as possible and probable that the
41:01
encounters between the Blessed Virgin Mary and St.
41:05
Bernadette, she was canonized on December 8, 1933 by Pope Pius XI,
41:12
were touch points at which the multidimensional metaphysical reality uncurled
41:19
momentarily into our three-dimensional physical world.
41:25
Bernadette, singular in her simplicity and purity,
41:29
was granted the rare privilege of gazing into that reality to behold a beautiful,
41:36
celestial, and living lady whom we know as queen of the universe,
41:41
a universe M-theory is now struggling to understand.
41:45
Pretty interesting, eh, Jones? Yes, I think it is. I called you Jones.
41:51
That's my nickname for my wife Lynn. She's Jones sometimes. Has been for 60-plus
41:56
years. You mean it for a long time.
41:58
Jones. Yes, I think it's very interesting.
42:02
And even to this day, you know, there are reported in Mitrogi and...
42:11
Arnbaldi, Granibaldi, and the apparitions of Our Lady, they're all very similar.
42:20
Fatima, there she is, but nobody can see her, but the ones she's addressing.
42:27
And why? I think it's a good question.
42:31
And I think when you think about it, there's so many things in the universe we don't know about.
42:36
For instance, this three-eyed atlas that's traveling through,
42:42
some say it's a comet, and others are saying, oh, there's a little more to it than that.
42:50
It's sending out some signals and so forth.
42:54
Who knows? There's certainly more to things than we know.
43:00
There's got to be a reason why Jesus walked through walls, why he walked on water.
43:06
Why so many other miracles in the Old Testament, New Testament, and what's going on now.
43:16
There's got to be some explanation that we probably in the future people will understand.
43:24
We don't, but.
43:26
Did he step into another dimension? That's one explanation. This could be an
43:31
explanation. It's M-theory.
43:32
We do know that, you know, they're talking about things like that,
43:36
and we have mathematics and so forth that show it, so that's a possibility.
43:41
Remember, I made an explanation of it one time. I thought, what if there is
43:46
matter in the universe that moves at a different rate?
43:49
You know, like what if there's something in the universe that moves at faster than the speed of light?
43:56
I mean, you know, it never moves less than the speed of light. It always moves faster.
44:02
We would never be able to perceive it, really, if it moves faster,
44:05
let's say, than the speed of light.
44:07
And it moves, in other words, where our matter.
44:12
An atom of our matter is in a certain place, and an atom of,
44:18
say, that matter is never in the same place at the same time because we have
44:22
to take time into consideration.
44:23
We have a fourth dimension, that's time. So if a particular atom of our universe
44:30
is never at the same time and place as a particular atom of that universe,
44:37
then those atoms could move right through all the atoms of our universe.
44:43
In other words, a person made up of those atoms could step right through a brick
44:47
wall because his atoms would never be in the same place as the brick wall atoms are of our universe.
44:53
And that would be an explanation of how things could be moved and how we could
44:57
see them is, you know, I don't understand it, would be somehow or another it
45:03
might be made possible that we could see them under certain circumstances.
45:07
Is it possible that they're talking about the UFOs here, the AE, I think the….
45:17
3I? Atlas? No, not just that, but the, you know… Yeah. Unidentified flying objects,
45:24
now they're called AEPs, I think, unidentified or something, aerial phenomenon.
45:31
So, if these are these possible,
45:35
possibly things that move to us from a different dimension, or are they something
45:41
that actually moves from a different form of matter that can slow down and come
45:46
into our universe or speed up and come into our universe, whatever the case might be,
45:49
and we really can't put our finger on them because actually they can move through.
45:54
They say that, you know, they see these things moving through the ocean at tremendous
45:58
speeds, which normally, you know, that couldn't happen.
46:00
But is it because they don't really encounter the atoms and energy,
46:08
you know, and so forth in our universe because they actually step in from a
46:14
actually, in effect, different universe?
46:16
And I mean, they're not coming from somewhere far away. They're just coming
46:20
from a different form of matter and energy in the universe that they exist in
46:25
stepping into our universe.
46:26
I mean, there are all kinds of things, you know, that could be possible. That's right.
46:31
That's right. And, you know, again, you have to go back to Hamlet.
46:36
And, you know, when he says to Horatio, there are more things in heaven and
46:40
earth, Horatio, than your philosophy has dreamt of.
46:44
Right. How wise Shakespeare was.
46:48
And when we talk about matter, you know, people say the materialists are always
46:52
talking about how something has to be material.
46:54
We don't even know what material is. You know, there's more. Right.
46:59
There's more empty space in what we call material than there is material.
47:03
And we don't even know, in effect, really what an atom is. Is it energy?
47:08
It's not really some little object that floats around. You know,
47:11
we have pictures of atoms, a little circle spinning around, something else and so forth.
47:16
Those are just, you know, diagrams
47:18
and drawings that we use to make things understandable to ourselves.
47:22
That's not what they really look like. We don't really know what matter and energy exactly is.
47:29
We have never really found that out.
47:31
I mean, we're still trying to understand what matter is. We don't know what matter is.
47:35
We don't know where, you know, we know that energy, you know,
47:39
is something that can't be created and it can't be destroyed.
47:43
But it's interchangeable with matter equals mc squared.
47:47
And so the amount of energy can be changed into matter and matter can be changed into energy.
47:54
That's how the tremendous amount of energy we get from the atomic bomb and so
47:58
forth there are things that could be beyond this that we certainly don't understand,
48:05
and the idea that the universe is material we don't like I say we don't even
48:10
know what the hell material is really so there are so many possible explanations
48:16
but this M-theory could be an explanation of how a lot of this stuff works right
48:21
and you know you're talking about up.
48:24
Seven to eleven different, what do you call it? Dimensions. Dimensions.
48:31
I can't, you know, how many of us could really comprehend that?
48:36
I think I've given this explanation before, but I'll give it again.
48:40
It's hard to comprehend that, but here's how we could possibly comprehend it.
48:44
We easily understand three dimensions.
48:47
You know, we know what a straight line is. We know what plane geometry is.
48:51
We can draw a square on a piece of paper. We can draw a triangle,
48:55
a circle, and so forth on a piece of paper.
48:57
Those are, you know, figures drawn on a plane, P-L-A-N-E, flat plane.
49:04
And then we can understand the third dimension. We can understand solid objects,
49:09
you know, a pyramid, a ball, you know, a block, and so forth.
49:14
All solid objects. We can understand when we move those objects from place to
49:18
place, it takes time. And so we can understand time.
49:22
Let's suppose there were people that lived in what we could call flatland.
49:26
And let's suppose that they only lived in two dimensions. That is plain,
49:31
you know, what you can see on a piece of paper.
49:33
If you draw a square on a piece of paper...
49:36
That would be a room, say, to a flatlander.
49:39
He would live inside that square, and to him, that square would be an enclosure,
49:44
and there'd be no way in or out. There's no up or down in flatland.
49:48
There's no thickness to the paper, really, because there is no up or down.
49:53
There's no thickness whatsoever. Everything is totally flat.
49:57
And so rain and everything else would be totally on a piece of paper flat,
50:02
coming from all four sides, let's say, and the walls of the four lines that
50:07
were walls of the square would hold out the rain and everything else.
50:12
And a flatlander living inside those so-called four walls, those lines on that
50:17
piece of paper, would think that it was a perfect enclosure and nothing could get in or out.
50:23
And we could put in our finger or a pencil from above or a ball or anything else.
50:29
And when it suddenly appeared inside that enclosure, the Flatlander would have
50:33
no idea where it came from. He can't look up because in Flatland, there is no up.
50:38
He can't look down because in Flatland, there is no down. There's only right,
50:42
left, forward, and back.
50:44
And so he sees the point when a ball came into his Flatland,
50:50
the first thing he would see as it came in would be a point on the surface of Flatland.
50:56
And then as it came and passed through Flatland, there would be the circle and
51:01
then a bigger and bigger circle until there was the entire circumference of the ball.
51:06
And then as the ball left Flatland and went through the other side,
51:09
the circles would grow smaller and all the way down to a point.
51:12
And he would wonder what was going on. How in the world did these circles and
51:16
points and stuff get into Flatland like that, get into this square that he was
51:20
living in, because for him, that square would be totally enclosed.
51:24
Just like when we're inside of a room with, you know, with the ceiling and the
51:29
floor and four sides, we can't figure out how anything could possibly get in there.
51:34
And if something suddenly appeared, we would be totally amazed. How did it get in?
51:40
We just couldn't figure it out. And somebody from outside who lived in a fifth
51:44
dimension, from five dimensions, he might say, well, I came in from Glockla.
51:51
And we say, Glockla? What in the world is Glockla? It would be the same thing
51:55
as saying I came in from above to a flatlander.
51:58
When you said above, he would have no concept and couldn't possibly think of
52:02
what above was because there's no above in flatland.
52:06
And there'd be no outside of the room that we live in.
52:10
And if somebody said, we came from Glocka, you'd be, are you nuts?
52:14
I mean, we're from Glocka, what's Glocka?
52:16
But he in fact came from a dimension that was perfectly clear to him, but not clear to us.
52:22
And that's how other dimensions would be to somebody from a fifth dimension, let's say.
52:26
He would be perfectly aware of the fifth dimension and easily understand how
52:31
he stepped into your room,
52:32
even though you couldn't imagine how anything could have gotten into a perfectly
52:37
closed room any more than a flatlander could figure out how somebody got into
52:41
that flat square that he lived in that's true and you know it really should
52:47
bolster our belief in a creator in our creator,
52:52
where would all this come from think about it where in the world i mean we couldn't
53:00
sit here and conjure up this kind of idea.
53:05
And maybe our minds, disattached from our bodies, can travel,
53:09
you know, from so-called flatland into, you know, other dimensions, our uncorporeal body.
53:17
Yes. But maybe when we have our bodies and our minds are, you know,
53:22
connected to our brains inside of our bodies, they can't.
53:27
That's why when people, their mind becomes disconnected from their body and
53:31
then out of a body experience, a death experience or near death experience,
53:36
the person's mind can leave the body and the person can report that he could
53:41
look at himself and be above the whole room or whatever and see everything that
53:46
was going on and even see through objects and so forth and see things that were
53:50
happening in the next room.
53:52
Right. Because his mind was able to wander or whatever, you know,
53:56
without the impediments of walls and so forth. St. Padre Pio.
54:00
He's from, and I did well.
54:05
It's the 20th century. Exactly. Maybe some people have that.
54:09
And, you know, he's been seen all, he'd be in the monastery in his room and
54:16
somebody'd be sitting with him.
54:18
Yet, a woman in New York ran into him on the street.
54:23
It's possible that maybe, you know, maybe that, again, maybe some people have
54:27
that ability to disattach their minds from their body and somehow project their
54:33
image in other places and so forth.
54:35
That we don't know anything about, but it's not impossible at all because the
54:38
material world we live in is stranger than we think.
54:41
So at any rate, we're going to have to say our prayer. A lot to think about.
54:46
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
54:49
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
54:53
May God rebuke him and humbly pray. And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host,
54:58
by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander
55:04
through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.
55:08
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit
55:12
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55:17
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