"A mystery priest who suddenly appeared at a Mo. accident scene is being called an angel."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-......hed.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/natio......2630227/

Mass hypnosis, or something truly unexplainable?

This is a reoccurring theme with auto accidents and other high drama moments. Many of you have heard that same basic story repeated through the years.

I actually have a cousin who survived a very serious car crash. He was saved from the wreckage by a "smiling robed bearded Jesus guy" who then promptly disappeared as the Ambulance arrived.
Of course my Cousin has always been nuts...so there.

I vaguely recall an incident in my youth when I was in my father's workshop building a magic prop...and I slipped with the hand drill...not a deep wound, but a cut into my left wrist that bled enough to make me get light-headed.

I'm pretty sure I recall a wooden savior coming to my aid...a kind of puppet...no, better...much better...and he had a tie on. And a jacket.

But that couldn't have been real.

Seems the entire crew saw the guy! Then he simply vanished. Amazing story!
They took over 70 photo's during the ordeal and NONE OF THEM had the character seen by the crew......
There is only one Catholic Church in the neighboring four towns and this was NOT their priest.

Wow! Extremely interesting. I would really like to hear some more info on this. By that I mean if information is found out as to who the priest is or what really happened here. Or was it really a priest?

I can believe something like this happened, as a similar thing happened to me in a neighborhood gang murder. it's too long a story to relate, and I'm not interested in convincing anyone, but stuff like this does occur.

According to the report, at the point of the "priest's" appearance, the emergency crews had determined that they could do nothing more except watch the young girl slowly die. They realized that they could not extract her from the vehicle.

And her mother stated later that "emergency personnel, the Missouri State Patrol, the deputies, the firemen - they are all saying the same thing, she never cried, she never screamed, she would just say, 'pray for me and pray out loud.'"

Imagine in those brief moments, the strange juxtaposition of helplessness and reflection, everyone lost in his own thoughts, but hearing a calm and constant chant: "pray for me . . . pray out loud" -- isn't it possible they could have all wished for and jointly imagined divine intervention? This is apparently the significance a couple of the rescue workers ascribed to the bizarre event.

Perhaps they wished for and RECEIVED divine intervention?

Heard about this on Coast to Coast... George seems to think it's real...

If so-called divine intervention is what happened, how come the divine intervention didn't prevent the accident in the first place?

I think the arrival of the other rescue crew *with the appropriate equipment* (jaws of life) is what saved the woman.

- Bob

"If so-called divine intervention is what happened, how come the divine intervention didn't prevent the accident in the first place? ":


That is one of two reflex responses to apparent "wonders." The other would be "If the divine intervention happened there, why didn't it happen at that other accident the same day in a neighboring state?"

By such criteria, we could never agree that any exceptional (much less unprecedented or supra mundane) "wonders" ever happened. So one would have to logically conclude (say) that Edison probably did not invent the electric light bulb, because it wasn't happening elsewhere and had not happened before.

George

There you go. Solved, and he wasn't even there. The only thing you did not explain is, where is the so called priest and who is he?

Solved?

How does a mere question, "Why didn't Event X happen too," resolve the question of whether Event Y happened?

George

George ... Your logic is 100% ... So these guys won't understand a word of it.....

Guess you guys don't know of or understand sarcasm.

My Bad!!!!!!

George, my reply was hardly a "reflex response". It was a legitimate supposition to counter folks who see miracles and apparent "wonders" at every turn. And it's a question I have to pose every time there's a so-called miracle. It's a variation of the age-old question of why God allows bad things to happen to good people. I've heard all the replies from the faithful and, frankly, they just don't satisfy me. As is usually the case, I think the simplest answer is the correct answer: there is no god.

Bad things happen to good people "because." But good things also happen to good people. And bad things happen to bad people, etc. IOW, things happen. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

George, applying my initial question to Edison's invention of the light bulb is not a valid, logical extension. No one has suggested that the light bulb is a "miracle" (in the Biblical sense of the word). It was the result of years of hard work by Edison and others who came before him. Edison was not working in a vacuum (pun intended), but instead following the work of those who came before him, notably Humphrey Davy 80 years prior.

Now, as to who the Catholic priest was or where he went. As Acesover correctly points out, I wasn't there. So I have no idea. But I wonder why it was a Catholic priest? Why wasn't it a rabbi or imam? Or, if you want to stay within Christianity, why not a Protestant minister? In fact, why did it have to be a priest at all? Why couldn't it have been just a firm believer, maybe one of the rescuers, who led the prayer? My point is, it could have been, but it wasn't.

My guess is that the Catholic priest was driving by, saw the accident scene and thought he could offer some help, spiritual or otherwise. Yes, I know the article said that the road was blocked off, but perhaps he parked his car and walked to the scene. But where did he go after the girl was rescued? Well, he went back to his car and continued on his way. Is it that much of a stretch to think that with all the rescuers bustling about and focusing on extricating the girl from the car that nobody noticed the priest walking up to the scene or leaving?

Am I right? I don't know because I wasn't there. But either were any of you.

- Bob

Bob:

Several points come to ind:

1. You assume that you occupy the olympian vantage point from which you can, at last, resolve the most substantial meg-questions that have hounded philosophers and theologians for centuries. Good for you. I did four degrees and spent my career as a dean and professor in two divinity schools, but I may need to adopt you as my guru.

2. The Edison example was offered as an analogy, NOT a parallel case.

3. Your next-to-last paragraph plays a version of the same game I addressed earlier. "Why was it him, rather than someone else? Why did that happen, rather than something else?" Welcome to what theologians have long called "the scandal of particularity." One early form: "How odd of God to choose the Jews."

4. You assume that anyone who is open the the possibility of a specific miracle is necessarily someone who sees miracles "at every turn." That may be your simple classification, but many people, including me, do not fit within it.

5. Arthur Eddington (the Cambridge physicist and Einstein's British interpreter) observed, "The cosmos is more complex than we imagine; it is more complex than we CAN imagine." Bob, that might mean that the "simplest answer" is perhaps NEVER "the correct answer." No authoritative thinker, anywhere in the Solar System, makes that premise the basis of his or her hermeneutic.

George

You win, George. No way can I compete with someone as erudite as you.

- Bob

Oh Bob:

It wasn't a competition.

You don't believe I won. You just bailed!

George