Unravel me this: the miraculous saint St. John Vianney of Ars, France, died 1859.

[Go_You_Big_Red_Fire_Engine]

@Maastricht

Mmm… maybe Vianney had Williams Syndrome?
Wiilams Syndrome would be consistent with Vianneys’limited intellect and his extreme gift for dealing with people. The poltergeist-like sounds coming from Vianneys room, might have been the priest insufficient motor-control. The hearing of children (I don’t know about adults) with williams is better then average, thus maybe enabling them to filter out conversations from around them. Children with williams syndrome often have difficulty swallowing and eating; Vianney fasted excessively, eating so little it was miraculous he stayed alive at all.

Maybe Vianny was an extremely rare combination; a deeply religious person with Williams Syndrome, who subconsciously honed his interpersonal skills to the level of a 19-th century John Edward. He could also have been that rarest of phenomenons; an expert at cold reading who does so subconsciously, without knowing it.

My little sister has William’s. I don’t think you quite understand how low an IQ of 50 is. At age 13 she can still only say less then a dozen words. I very much doubt she will ever be able to tie her shoes.
Also, the thing with williams is that it is characterised by a heart defect. Also, the feeding problems disappear with age, and as you said, he continued on with this. If you had’ve actually read the sites you provided instead of just choosing to read the points you wanted, then you would’ve noticed this.
Not only that, a person with William’s syndrome does not look like your average person, they do in fact, have the typical Down’s syndrome face. Looking at the picture of his statue from your link, that is far from what a person with william’s syndrome looks like.
Thank you for proving that people only pick out the information they want to hear. You just answered your own question.

[Maastricht]

Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor I’m with you that France was, at the time, (I don’t say anything about present times) full of religious superstition. I don’t agree with you if you say, however, is that we can’t discuss the available facts around Vianney because those facts were 100% made-up by people in need of miracles.
Even at the time, France had plenty of critical minds and Vianney was around long enough to allow critical investigation. I haven’t heard of anybody at the time unmasking Vianney as a fraud, like present day guru’s like Sai Babba have been unmasked. If somebody has information unmasking Vianney, I’d be extremely interested.
Even if only 5 % of the stories are based in fact, that’s still a lot of unexplained miracles. I can’t help but being very curious about those. What was going on there? Just “cold reading” or was it more?

As to your remark that I’m witnessing, I was surprised, because I’m as atheist as they come. I don’t even believe in Something Up There, like many not quite ateists do. I do believe, however, in exceptional people (or ordinary people with exceptional gifts) whose talents are amplefied by exceptional circumstances. There’s too much anecdotical evidence to deny the almost miraculous gifts of people like Mozart, Einstein, and lesser-known geniuses in other area’s. I feel some people are geniuses in the area of social skills. If Vianney was one of those, I’m interested in him. Whetether God had anything to do with his skills is to me the least interesting aspect of somebody like Vianney.

ouryL, according to the book I read (the title was: Holy lives explained to non-religious people) the woman was still standing in line and Vianney adressed her on his way out of church.

Go You Big Red Fire Engine, I’m sorry if I made uninformed suggestions about a subject you must know more about then I do. I may be guilty of romanticizing it, just schizophrenia or autism haven been romanticized. Personally, I think Williams Syndrome is a fascinating phenomenon, and if you would consider hosting a tread about your first-hand knowledge of Williams Syndrome I would be very interested.
What first got me interested Williams Syndrome was a TV-documentary presented by Oliver Sacks. He said that although children with Williams syndriome may
have very low IQ’s, their verbal and interpersonal skills are often (I suppose that differs from individual to individual) age appropriate or even higher then their age. He also described the children he met as extremely outgoing, sensitive and cheerful. Sacks, a naturally shy person, remarked that being in a camp with WS-kids was wonderful because the kids overcame his shyness with total ease.
As this site says:

The results of these continuing studies show dramatic differences between Williams and Down syndrome. Most remarkable neuropsychologically is the preservation of linguistic skills in Williams, relative to Down syndrome

You are right about the heart defect though. And also in that Vianneys face (I’ve seen a photograph of his face, too) isn’t typical of the “elfkin faces” most children with Williams Syndrome have. The food however… this is a total uninformed WAG, but maybe Vianney didn’t mind living on two mouldy potatoes a day because he never got to like food because of his childhood digestion- and eating problems.
I don’t know; is it possible to have a slight case, or some traits of, Williams Syndrome? I suppose not?

Mods, if this discussion stays alive, feel free to move it to a more approprate forum.

[Go_You_Big_Red_Fire_Engine]

I don’t believe it is possible to have only some traits. You either have it or you don’t.
If you are interested in it, I suggest you get out this book from your local university library (or [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/019512314X?v=glance. I understand that this is probably not possible, but it is very interesting if you are interested in those sort of disorders. It has been a while since I have read it so my memory is not so clear. I remember the higher linguistics thing, and they did an experiment in that book and the William’s Syndrome kids could speak with “more advanced” words. I was gonna post about some stuff that is a bit IIRC, but I won’t as I can’t remember it all that well. But as for the age-language thing, that’s rather optimistic. Here’s a good [URL=http://williams-syndrome.org/forteachers/teachers.html]few paragraphs:

The excellent vocabulary of many children with Williams syndrome is a characteristic that is usually quite apparent to others. This area is often the highest for a child in terms of “test-age”. It is common for children with Williams syndrome to use somewhat unusual words and phrases. This is probably due to a combination of excellent auditory memory skills and some difficulty with language processing, resulting in language being encoded in ‘chunks’. It is important not to expect all areas of a child’s functioning to be at the level of their vocabulary.
…
For some children, this is most apparent in ‘stress’ situations such as when they are asked a question which has only one right answer, while for many it is a problem in their spontaneous speech as well. Many children develop the strategy of ‘circumlocution,’ or talking around the word. This strategy, while effective when combined with a short attention span, can result in language at times seeming not to make sense. The child may begin telling about one thing, have trouble thinking of a needed word, come up with a somewhat related phrase, and move on to talking about something more related to the substitute phrase than the initial topic.

Basically with the food thing, it’s that they find it hard to actually swallow food, my sister grew out of this by about age 6, so he probably wouldn’t even remember it. All IMHO, of course.