Posted on 03/14/2006 12:47:42 PM PST by tbird5
OME -- The sudden recovery of a young French nun suffering from Parkinson's disease is at the heart of the sainthood case for Pope John Paul II, the Polish priest who heads the inquiry said Monday.
The Vatican needs to confirm a miracle after John Paul's death for the pontiff to be beatified, the first step toward his possible canonization.
Monsignor Slawomir Oder told The Associated Press in an interview that an official inquiry into the nun's inexplicable recovery was beginning this week.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Likely suspended.
It was in the cards. No miracle, just accurate reading.
There's ALWAYS the same disconnect with those people: that scripture they quote --- who had it originally...lol...yet we're going to hell.
The Pope and RR did indeed work a miracle to bring down the USSR.
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Goodness. I don't think you did. MineralMan, I hope you understand that your contributions are of value to us.
Actually, MineralMan, you're right about this one.
Medical miracles are terribly hard to authenticate. First, you need an exact diagnosis. Second, you need to be able to rule out a cure stemming from medical treatment.
Right there you have a paradox, because the kind of medical system that can give you an exact and certain diagnosis is also the kind of system which is in almost every case supplying some form of treatment.
Next, the Church insists that the cure must be (1) inexplicable, (2) instantaneous, (3) complete, and (4) permanent. This is an extremely tall order. It's practically daring God to jump through hoops.
This is why the Church so very, very rarely endorses a miraculous interpretation. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think I'm in the ballpark when I say there have been on the order of 10,000 purported miraculous cures at the Shrine at Lourdes, France, since 1858, but the Church has offically investigated and recognized only 66.
That doesn't definitely rule out all the others. Most of them were simply not investigated, or didn't have sufficient documentation. But it does show how amazingly conservative, even skeptical, the Church is on such questions.
And rightly. The presumption is --- well, as Rene Laurentin says, "Normally, God acts normally."
you heard him, petronski, truth is a defense.... so go ahead... : )
You are simply wrong. The panels who evaluate miracles according to seven strictly scientific criteria are composed of specialists in whatever type of disease is involved. They are selected for their professional competence and may or may not be religious believers--it doesn't matter. Their task is to review the before and after clinical evidence and to decide if a natural explanation can be found. All a miracle is is a cure that has no natural, plausible, scientific explanation. Miracle (miraculum) simply means "marvel" or "inexplicable happening."
This is known in the debating trade as a half-truth. The final decision is made by church officials but on the basis of the expert medical opinion.
Your original claim, as I recall, was that the process was "wholly" within the Church. You did a bait and switch here.
One of the seven criteria is that the cure must be permanent. No official determination is made until the person cured has remained cured for a reasonable length of time, depending on the disease. If it is a disease known to occasionaly go into natural remission, the case is not even considered.
In the first place, the disease has to be one for which no cure is known or extremely difficult to cure. The fact that we know medically how to cure the disease readily would mean that perhaps, just perhaps, whatever it is that effects the cure when treatment is given could affected this particular case in some accidental, unnoticed way. Even though that is so unlikely to have happened (if the treatment was not given) that it would require credulity to think that it could happen, still, the fact that it is remotely thinkable means that any disease for which a ready cure is known cannot serve as a possible miracle case.
2. the disease must not be in a stage at which it is liable to disappear shortly by itself
3. either no medical treatment has been given or it must be certain that the medical treatment given has no reference to the cure--if someone is dying of pancreatic cancer, giving him painkillers that are not in any way known to have the slightest ability to cure the disease would not be a problem
4. the cure must be instantaneous (to reduce the variables of possible natural cures through diet or exercise or whatever, over time)
5. the cure must be complete--the classic case of a blind man with an atrophied optic nerve who went to Lourdes, bathed in the water, began to see but still had an atrophied optic nerve--that was not a complete cure though it surely is an inexplicability.
6. the cure must be permanent--as explained above.
7. the cure must not be preceded by any crisis of a sort which owuld make it possible the cure was wholly or partly natural
Obviously applying these criteria, depending on the circumstances, can involve some degree of judgment call and medical experts can disagree. That's why a panel is employed.
I am skeptical of this particular case. It is being hyped by some but it strikes me as a poor case to satisfy the seven criteria. I wish the credulous babblers, whether Catholic or mainstream media curiosity-seekers would shut up.
But to say that the Church manipulates the process and canonizes whomever she wishes is calumny against the Church.
Thanks again.
How do you know it had some supernatural element?
OK.
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