I'm not sure if it's my faith talking or my cynical nature talking, but what I take away from this is that people are stupid and seeking a goofy psuedo-spirituality in the most idiotic of places.
I'm sure that some of these same people piling in by the droves to see the shadow that sort of - kind of - if you tilt your head just right and squint your eyes just right - MIGHT look like a man with a beard and a Farrah Fawcett haircut - I'm positive that many of these people never darken the doors of a church at any other time.
Nor do some of these people consider the REAL Jesus Christ at any other time.
I don't believe that it's something that God did based on anyone's prayer - and that it's not to be a place for people to come to worship what they see.
From the same article:
"Twelve years ago, 7,000 people visited a small Baptist church in Port Sulphur to view luminous crosses shining on its windows. And 10 years before that, hundreds lined up at two homes in St. Bernard to see crosses projected on bathroom windows."
If one's intent is to make a deity out of some "thing" and then worship that "thing" as if it were a god incarnate, then yes... that would be idolatry.
However having not been present at the event in question, it seems somewhat disingenuous to extrapolate and arrive at your statement "…just more catholic idolatry" from one news article. Just sayin...
You're taking this too far and too personal.
I know you want to be a Catholic (why I cannot fathom), but they are known for their Mary worship, relics, statues, signs (Fatima and such things) and that is just fact.
I'm not judging individual hearts, only a false religion, which God's word tells us to do.
Test the spirits.
So are the people of Athens and Ephesus today. What dooes that say about all of them? Nothing to look to in the future. Just accomplishments of the past.