In looking at Reformation culture, one of the overarching themes is the balance between the sacred and the profane, the divine and the everyday. While every side of the confessional divide agreed that supernatural forces interacted with the physical world, this agreement tended to break down over the meaning of the sacred, its relationship with everyday life, and the authority to verify and interpret supernatural occurrences. It is a common misperception that Catholicism was more "superstitious" than Protestantism, but while Protestants did not believe in the efficacy of saints' relics for example, they were still in many ways superstitious by modern standards.
Apparitions were extremely common in pre-modern religion and people often perceived a supernatural meaning in random, accidental events. However as this montage shows, this tendency is still alive and well today in our supposedly modern, rational world. This can raise some interesting questions about the meaning of modernity, and when/how the transition to modernity took place.
