The Miracle Detective
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5.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Rolling Stone reporter’s “fascinating . . . globe-trotting, first-person spiritual odyssey” into the Catholic Church’s investigations of reported miracles (Seattle Post-Intelligencer).
In a tiny, dilapidated trailer in northeastern Oregon, a young woman saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in an ordinary landscape painting hanging on her bedroom wall. After some skepticism from the local parish, the matter was placed “under investigation” by the Catholic diocese. Investigative journalist and Rolling Stone contributor Randall Sullivan wanted to know how, exactly, one might conduct an official inquiry into such an incident. So began his eight year immersion into the world of “Miracle Detectives.”
Sullivan set off to interview theologians, historians, and postulators from the Sacred Congregation of the Causes for Saints, men charged by the Vatican with testing the miraculous and judging the holy. Sullivan traveled from the Vatican to the village of Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where six visionaries had seen apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Then, on a more personal turn, he traveled to Scottsdale, Arizona, to visit the site of America’s most controversial Virgin Mary sighting.
In prose that “often reads like a spiritual whodunit,” The Miracle Detective takes you along Sullivan’s eight-year investigation into apocalyptic prophesies, claims of revelation, and the search for a genuine, direct encounter between man and god (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In what often reads like a spiritual whodunit, author and Rolling Stone contributing editor Sullivan takes readers on a journey into the labyrinthine world of religious apparitions and miracle investigations. Sullivan's fascination with the subject began in 1994 when he learned of a spiritual phenomenon in his own backyard the reported apparition of the Virgin Mary in a rundown trailer in eastern Oregon. Intrigued, he did some cursory research about such occurrences and proposed to his publisher to do a book on "miracle detectives." He began in Rome, where he met with Catholic Church officials charged with investigating such phenomena, and proceeded to the village of Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia, where the Virgin reportedly first appeared to six young people in 1981. It was in Medjugorje that Sullivan encountered an unexpected turn in his investigation a personal religious experience in which a mysterious young woman came to his aid as he made a pilgrimage up the mountain of Krizevac. This and his subsequent spiritual encounters make for an interesting subplot as Sullivan continues his quest to explain the unexplainable, though he never fully discloses the details of where those experiences led him. Much has been written about Marian apparitions, particularly those at Medjugorje, but The Miracle Detective may well emerge as one of the most comprehensive and engaging modern works on the subject. Well told and expertly researched, Sullivan's book should appeal to skeptics and believers alike.
