Truth, myth, and history

Further to the post about St Winifred, the shrine website has a discussion of the double miracle (the new well, and the restoration of the young girl’s severed head) that seems relevant to the conversation we’ve been having on an earlier thread about the truth in the Bible.

For modern men and women, it is not so much the wonderful restorations to health which happened and still happen at the Well which pose a problem of belief and understanding, but the double “miracle” at the heart of the medieval legend of St Winefride which initiated the pilgrimage and the sequence of healings – the sudden appearance of the water and the resurrection of the dead woman. How is one to interpret the legend, without explaining away the truth that countless numbers of people down the centuries have found at its core?

Jonah in the belly of a fish

Of course, before modern times these miracles presented no real problem: to God, after all, all things were possible. Every Christian believed that the Son of God rose from the dead after His crucifixion; and before that Jesus had restored His friend Lazarus to life, in order, as He prayed to His Father, “that they may believe that Thou hast sent me” (St John 11:42).

The legend of St Winefride was only written down 500 years after the events it describes were said to have occurred. But it is important to recognise that Winefride and Beuno were real people who had really lived in 7th-century Wales.

Their written “Lives” are not history as this is understood today, but symbolic explorations of such facts about them that local oral tradition had preserved. Historians are free to interpret this rich mixture of fact and legend as best fits all the information.

An economical explanation would tell us that the Well was always here, but took on a new meaning in the light of the events that happened beside it in the 7th century; and then with time this meaning suggested to tradition that the Well itself was new. Beuno’s own medieval Welsh “Life” strongly suggests that he had an extraordinary power to heal troubled minds. Perhaps it was that Winefride was not killed in the brutal rape attack, but was severely wounded and traumatised, to be nursed back to mental and physical health, to “new life”, by St Beuno. Both “Lives” of St Winefride stress the scars that she bore to the end of her life.

The martyrdom of St Winefride is illustrated in a window in St Winefride’s Catholic church in Holywell. The window was presented by pilgrims in 1860
The “Lives” also stress that people came to visit the girl who had returned to life, and to see the scars that witnessed to that restoration. Symbolically, Winefride had returned from the dead. But the medieval exploration of the symbolism went further than this, as the “Lives” and other medieval texts reveal. Like Lazarus, Winefride pointed towards the resurrection of Jesus, and beyond Jesus, to the eventual resurrection of all who would believe in Him. Symbolically, Winefride’s resurrection guaranteed to all who cared to meditate upon her story the general resurrection promised to all believers. The symbolism went further still. Christian teaching understood that believers were incorporated into Christ through the sacrament of baptism; the going into and coming out of the baptismal font was experienced as a death to sin and a rising to new life; and baptism was in this way the means of approaching the general resurrection.

Winefride – the Welsh Lazarus – went down into death and returned to life through a special mercy of God. For Christians, their baptism paralleled this experience. And, like Winefride going down to death and rising to life, and like the Christian entering the waters of baptism and coming forth to spiritual wholeness, the sick pilgrim to Holywell went down into the waters of the Well and came out restored to health. Symbolically imitating Winefride, renewing their own baptisms, and incorporating themselves into Christ, all devout pilgrims to Holywell have experienced their pilgrimage as a profound symbol of their whole spiritual life.

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Second miracle under investigation

John Henry Newman

On the eve of the beatification of John Henry Newman, the Catholic Church is about to send someone to Mexico to investigate a miracle. If confirmed, it may be the second miracle required for canonisation.

Catholic officials are investigating claims that a severely deformed baby was born in a perfectly normal condition after the child’s mother prayed to Cardinal John Henry Newman for a miracle.

Andrea Ambrosi, the Vatican lawyer in charge of Cardinal Newman’s cause for canonization, has revealed in a BBC program to be broadcast Sept. 18 that he hopes the inexplicable healing may be the miracle needed to canonize Cardinal Newman as Britain’s next saint…

“I am about to leave for Mexico City precisely because that could be the miracle for his canonization,” Ambrosi said in the documentary — “Newman: Saint or Sinner?” — excerpts of which were released by the BBC Sept. 9.

The alleged healing occurred after prenatal scans revealed that the unborn baby was “severely deformed.” … The mother, a devout Catholic, insisted on going through with the pregnancy.

“The child was born perfect following the mother praying to Newman, and scientists can’t explain it.”

For more, see the CNS story these clips were taken from.

English journalist and author John Cornwell says:

John Henry Newman is simply the most electrifying religious thinker and writer in English of the past 200 years – subtle, imaginative, deeply learned, at times maddeningly paradoxical and dialectical. James Joyce and Gerard Manley Hopkins claimed that he was the finest English prose stylist of the 19th century. His range is prodigious: poetry (“The Dream of Gerontius”), fiction, history, hymns (famously, “Lead, Kindly Light”), many hundreds of published sermons, as well as profound works of theology and philosophy. His Apologia Pro Vita Sua is by common consent the greatest spiritual autobiography since Augustine’s Confessions. A literary workaholic, he prayed with a pen in his hand. Believing in Christianity, he thought, was like falling in love. His motto was “Heart speaks unto Heart”; bullying and clever arguments, he said, do not bring us to God.

Here is a link to the story of the first miracle.

And here’s an explanation of the process of canonisation.

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A people of prayer

I’ve noticed two blog topics that keep being raised by atheists on Catholic sites – and (at least in my view) constantly misrepresented and misinterpreted. One is miracles on which I’ve blogged a whole series of posts. The other is prayer.

I’ve been in several conversations recently, and it became obvious fairly early on that those I was talking to thought prayer was a matter of asking for things.

In the minds of the atheists I’ve been talking to, the two seem to be linked. They think prayer is a matter of asking for miracles; the absence of an overt and obvious miracle means the prayer didn’t ‘work’.

This kind of ‘our Santa Claus who art in Heaven’ thinking denotes a primitive view of divinity that would do the average Aztec or Babylonian proud. The god it envisages needs to be cajoled, flattered, and bribed into giving sweeties to his followers. In the conversations I’ve had, it has taken the theists involved a while to comprehend the gulf between their view of prayer and that held by the atheists. It gave the debate the kind of unevenness to be expected when one player thinks the game is tennis and the other thinks it is cricket.

So let me start by stating that I see prayer as a conversation between me and God. A conversation does not consist of one party giving the other a shopping list of requests.  I thought it could be interesting to talk about the different types of prayer, and give examples from my own experience of common prayers that fit the types. These categories are not exclusive – they overlap and merge – but they are sufficiently different to be worth talking about individually. Can you think of any more? Let me know:

• intercessory
• petitionary
• offertory
• thanksgiving
• worship
• listening
• transcendant
• verbal
• active
• contemplative
• meditative.

That should keep me busy for a few posts.

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Miracles – direct interventions

Finally, we get to what might be called real miracles – the ones where God himself intervenes.

With my usual passion for sorting things into categories, I’m calling them:

• my job here is (not) done
• signs and wonders.

In other words, I’m speculating here about what God’s purpose for performing a miracle might be.

First, let me briefly recap on previous posts on this topic. I’ve defined a miracle as an intervention by God in the normal workings of the universe. I’ve explored all sorts of wonders, and concluded that they are evidence of an awesome, amazing, universe – but not necessarily miracles in the sense of that particular definition.

I’ve also acknowledged the sense in which the existence and operation of the universe is a miracle, and therefore everything in it likewise.

I’ve claimed two everyday events – the ensoulling of a zygote and the transubstantiation of the Eucharistic host – as miracles in the strict sense of the definition.  

And I’ve dismissed most of what is normally claimed as miraculous as very likely being the normal workings of a universe that is subject to the will of the Almighty.

This, incidentally, answers (to my satisfaction, anyway) most of those questions about ‘why did God save this one, and not that; why did He answer this prayer and not that?’

But I also believe that God does – from time to time – intervene directly (apart from the two everyday cases above). So when? And why?

My job here is (not) done?

This seems to me to cover a great heap of instances: miraculous escapes; miraculous healings.

To understand why God might intervene to protect one person, but not another, we need to accept three things.

Death is change

First: death isn’t as bad as it’s cracked up to be. It seems to me that those who argue this case come from one of two positions:

1. There is no God (or at a minimum, no god who cares about us), this life is all there is, death is an arbitrary happenstance.
2. There is a God, he cares about us, this life is just a small fraction of our existence, death sets us free for the next adventure.

Either position can be argued credibly. But mixing the two positions leads to confusion and nonsense. For example, arguing that the happenstance of death proves that God doesn’t care assumes the existence of God and the finality of death – and the two just don’t go together. Similarly, the argument that there is no (personal) god and that those who have ‘passed over’ are somehow still alive ‘on another plane’ seems to me to lack sense and logic.

So my first assumption is that position 2 is correct: there is a God, he cares about us, this life is just a small fraction of our existence, death sets us free.

The appointed hour

My second assumption is that each of us is in this world for a purpose. It may be that we have the gifts to do something great. It may be that something we do or say – or the mere fact that we have existed – will affect someone else so that they are prompted to use their gifts. It may even be, as Taylor Caldwell has her Lucifer complain, that God is increasing the numbers of the saved by creating ensouled humans and taking them home before birth.

And bring all souls to heaven…

My third assumption is that God wants us to be saved, and he wishes to take us home at the time and in the way that gives us our best chance of making a choice for him. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that everyone dies at the right time for them – because humans have free will, and can ignore God.

Evidence? It depends…

These three assumptions lead logically to the main contention in the headline that – if we listen to the promptings of God – we don’t die until we’ve finished what we came to do.

Evidence of miraculous healing is compelling to the person healed – perhaps even to families and friends – but easily discounted by those who don’t wish to believe. They can say ‘initial misdiagnosis’, ‘natural processes’; ‘unknown causes, but this kind of thing happens’, ‘investigator error/fraud’ etc, etc.

And miraculous escapes are even more easily discounted by reference to ‘coincidence’. But again, compelling to those who heard a voice telling them not to get on the plane, or felt an overwhelming urge to leave town the day before the earthquake.

 I’ve posted about the 60+ miracles of Fatima – fully attested miracles with before and after medical evidence. I’ve posted about the process used in the investigation of miracles for beatification purposes. I’ve also posted about one of my own experiences of a miraculous healing. But I’m convinced because I believe; I don’t believe because I’m convinced.

St Thomas, putting his hands in the side of Christ and touching the wounds on Christ’s hands, knelt and said: ‘my Lord and my God’ – but he was predisposed to believe. Otherwise, his response could have been to put it down to hallucination, wishful thinking, a trick by the other disciples, remarkably rapid healing on the part of someone not quite dead – or any one of a dozen other improbable but ‘natural’ explanations.

Similarly, the miracle healings I have observed may have other explanations – though in at least one case what happened was described to me by the highly qualified specialists in charge as ‘impossible’. But I believed in God, and so I believe I know the explanation.

Signs and wonders

The other main reason for divine intervention is as a sign that God is acting in the world – Jesus himself said this about many of the miracles he performed. Again, the sign is for those who already believe or who are disposed to believe. Those who are disposed to disbelief will not believe ‘even if someone were to come back from the dead’ (biblical ref). So the sign is not to convince anyone of the existence of God, but rather to say to believers, this event – this message – is from God.

There are several reasonably famous miracles that are clearly intended as signs, and that have investigated and written about both by those who believe and those who don’t. I’ll briefly talk about the Eucharistic miracle at Lanciano, the tilma of our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. I by no means wish to imply that these are the only signs and wonders we know of, or that a sign needs to be addressed to a mass audience. Most believers I know can think of an incident or two that they regard as God shouting to get their attention.

But these three are good examples of my contention that miracles prove nothing to those who do not already believe. All three have had many pages written showing how they are miracles, and equally many pages written showing how they are not. Note that Catholics are not obliged to believe in any of them. Some do; some don’t.

Jesus is the Bread of Life

Lanciano first. Thecontext is a time in the 8^th Century when there was a lot of debate about what really happens at the Eucharist. The story goes that a priest who doubted that the Eucharistic host became the physical body and blood of Jesus prayed for belief, and the host changed in his hands with part of it becoming flesh that dripped blood. Over a thousand years have passed, and the host from time to time is marched through the streets in procession. Scientific tests in 1971 found that the flesh is from the heart muscle and the blood is AB type. The researcher found no trace of preservative – the condition of the flesh and blood indicated they were drawn from a living person, not a corpse.

Believers claim: a miracle to support the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Unbelievers claim: fraud – both in the 8^th Century and recently during the investigation. By the way, the Internet claim that the 1971 investigation never happened is untrue.

Roses from heaven

Guadalupe is a place in Mexico. The context is the early years after the Spanish conquistadors. Most of the population is still pagan, and they heavily oppressed by the few, nervous, military occupiers. The story goes that in 1531 an Aztec convert meets a beautiful Aztec princess who tells him she is Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and sends him to the Bishop to ask for a church to be built where she appeared. After several trips back and forth, the Bishop asks for a sign. Mary gives the Aztec roses from the Bishop’s own Spanish province, and when the Aztec drops them on the Bishop’s floor, the tilma (poncho-style garment) he carried them displays an image of the Lady.

The tilma was made from cactus fibres and as such should have turned into dust after approximately twenty years. Instead it has survived and been on diplay to the faithful for nearly 500 years despite being exposed to the smoke of candles throughout the centuries. Infrared spectroscopy has confirmed the integrity of the image. The image on the tilma is composed of pigments that have not been identified by chemical analysis as being the product of animal, vegetable, or mineral dye. No undersketch has been identified below the painting.

The image has been subjected to investigation of various kinds repeatedly since the middle of the 20^th century. A claim that Juan Diego (the Aztec) never existed has been comprehensively debunked with historical records, including his death certificate.

Believers claim: a miracle to convert Aztecs and bring them under protection of the Church.

Unbelievers claim: fraud and gullibility.

Errors from Russia

The miracle of the sun at Fatima was the climax of a series of apparitions seen by three peasant children in Portugal. The context is the first World War, in the months prior to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Portugal has an atheist secular government and a radically atheist press. The local hierarchy first attempt to suppress the visionaries, but they insist that they are seeing visions and being given messages. The Lady they see asks for prayers and an act of consecration to prevent Russia from falling into an error that will contaminate the whole the world. The bishops ask for a sign, and are promised one for midday on 13 October 1917. For weeks prior to this date, the media ridicule this absurd claim. A crowd estimated at 70,000 to 100,000 people gathers to wait for the sign. After a heavy shower of rain, the clouds clear and the sun is seen to zigzag towards the earth. People report their wet clothes suddenly drying. This event is seen by atheists and believers; crowd control, press, and faithful; even people who are up to 18 kilometres away at the time. Different people see different things. A few see nothing. Nothing shows up on radar.

In a seven year investigation some years later, hundreds of witness testimonies were collected. A number of theories have been suggested to account for the phenomena. The suggestion that it was caused by gazing into the sun in a highly charged religious atmosphere doesn’t take into account the people who weren’t there and still saw the event. Several meteorological phenomena might account for some part of what was perceived, but each has been criticized as impossible or extremely unlikely in the given conditions. One researcher has suggested that the event was natural, but the fact that it had been predicted for that exact time was a miracle.

Believers claim: an event on the spiritual level which was seen by those who were open to seeing it – to convince people of need to act quickly to pray for the conversion of Russia. (It didn’t happen. The Bolshevik revolution did.)

Unbelievers claim: mass hysteria (even of those who weren’t actually in the crowd); staring into the sun; unexplained visual phenomenon.

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Realists and miracles

The Anchoress posted this quote from the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky:

. . . but it seemed to me that Alyosha was even more of a realist than the rest of us. Oh, of course, in the monastery he believed absolutely in miracles, but in my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles.
[…]
As soon as [Alyosha] reflected seriously and was struck by the conviction that immortality and God exist, he naturally said at once to himself: ‘I want to live for immortality and I reject any halfway compromise.’ In just the same way, if he had decided that immortality and God do not exist, he would immediately have joined the atheists and socialists (for socialism is not only the labor question or the question of the so-called fourth estate, but first of all the question of atheism, the question of the modern embodiment of atheism, the question of the Tower of Babel built precisely without God, not to go from earth to heaven, but to bring heaven down to earth.)”

Yes, exactly.

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Victim and Priest, salvation of the world

From Pope Benedict’s homily for Corpus Christi:

Giving thanks and with a blessing, Jesus transformed the bread and wine. It is divine love that transforms: the love with which Jesus accepts in advance to give himself completely for us. This love is none other than the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, which consecrates the bread and wine and changes their substance into the Body and the Blood of the Lord, rendering present in the Sacrament the same sacrifice that is made later in a bloody manner on the cross.

We can conclude that Christ was a true and effective priest because he was full of the power of the Holy Spirit, he was the culmination of all the fullness of the love of God “on the night he was betrayed,” precisely in the “hour of darkness” (cf. Luke 22:53). It is this divine power, the same that brought about the Incarnation of the Word, which transformed the extreme violence and the extreme injustice [of his death] into a supreme act of love and justice.

This is the work of the priesthood of Christ, which the Church has inherited and continues to perpetuate, in the twofold form of ordinary priesthood of the baptized and that of the ordained ministers, to transform the world with the love of God. All, priests and faithful, are nourished by the same Eucharist, all of us prostrate ourselves to adore it, because present in it is our Teacher and Lord, present is the real Body of Jesus, Victim and Priest, salvation of the world. Come, let us exult with hymns of joy. Come, let us adore! Amen.

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Signs and wonders, part two

This is the second half of the post on miracles that – in my view – may really be part of the natural order. To repeat the disclaimer from the first part, if wild speculation annoys you, read no further. Many of the ideas in this post are highly speculative; I offer them as a brain-stretching exercise rather than a serious statement of beliefs. Some bits may be true. I have no idea which bits.

Works of faith

Faith, itself, works miracles. I don’t know anyone who would disagree with this. Rationalists describe it as ‘mind over matter’, ‘placebo effect’, ‘the force of the will’, and all sorts of other phrases that are meant to explain that this is really not unusual, that it is part of the way things work, and so even if we can’t understand it, it isn’t a miracle.

A miracle it is, by Newman’s definition – something that breaches the laws of the fixed system of physical laws described by scientific observation. But the direct intervention of God? Not necessarily.

We know that people can ‘think’ themselves sick. Can they ‘think’ themselves wounded? Take, as an example, the stigmata. Can someone, by focusing with all their heart on the sufferings of Christ, show the wounds of the Passion? (This isn’t a discussion about any specific instance of the stigmata – and yes, I know about the speculation that all such wounds are physically self-inflicted.)

Another case is the EEGs of mystics, which show their brains in Delta state – which most adults only attain in deep sleep. Some people claim this as a miracle. I’d be happy to claim it as an anomaly – but meaning what? What is happening when an otherwise sane and normal person claims to be experiencing a vision, and their brains are exhibiting Delta waves? Have they stumbled on a way to dream while they’re awake? Or are the Delta waves a physical sign of a connection with the spiritual? If the second, it still isn’t a signof the supernatural (as long as you think of the spiritual realm as natural). By the way, I see no particular reason to suppose that only Catholic, or only Christian, visions are direct connections to the spiritual. (Though which spiritual realm is a question for another blog.)

We know that claims of healings and answers to prayer cross faith boundaries. Some take this as evidence of God is not limited by our human division; some as evidence that there is a natural law that covers such things; some as evidence that no such things occur. I speculate that all three could be true at different times and for different events. In this post, I’m interested in the middle one – that we are stranger and more wonderful than we know.

Some modern skeptics dismiss healings (and curses) as mere superstition – mind over matter, yes; but one’s own matter. Self belief, or belief in the charm, person or god purportedly performing the miracle is required. There are documented cases of healthy people sickening and dying because they know they have been cursed. There are anecdotal claims of people sickening and dying even though they don’t know they’ve been cursed. Coincidence? A negative effect of the interconnectedness of humankind? Or herbal poisons in the teapot?

The results from research into the power of prayer have been predictably mixed, and sadly contaminated by the observer effect. There have been double-blind studies claiming that people prayed for heal more quickly than those who are not prayed for; others that claimed no effect at all; and one (clearly not a double-blind study) that found that people who knew they were being prayed for did worse because it confirmed for them that they were very sick!

As a Catholic, I believe that I have been instructed to pray for my own needs and wants, and also for others. Why? That’s another whole blog post in itself, but in this post I just want to raise the possibility that thinking about someone, wishing someone well, may in itself be effective; that it must be effective if, in fact, humankind are interconnected.

I find it interesting that, mystics of all religions teach that both prayers and curses work better when the person praying (or cursing) is closely related to the object of the prayer (or curse). Logically, one would expect that a closer physical connection would make for a closer spiritual connection – but since such a conclusion is logical, the fact that mystics agree doesn’t provide any evidence about whether they are right, frauds, or mistaken.

Natural law and the saints

I base this speculation on my own observations and on reports by others who report odd things happening around the saints.

First, the saints excel at the kinds of things named above – prophecy (in the sense of knowing things without being told), healings, visions, precognition, levitation. There are other things, too. There have been reports of bilocation – a saint being somewhere he couldn’t possibly be (perhaps thousands of miles away from another site where his presence is attested). Saints work what we call miracles without even thinking about it – someone touches them in crowd, or is touched by their clothing, and is healed. Saints bodies don’t corrupt when they die. They appear to people after they’re dead.

There are two obvious positions on this: one is, God does it – the ‘it’s a miracle, stupid’ approach. The other is that every report is explained by coincidence, fraud, gullibility, mental illness, wishful thinking, or some other mechanism that does not so much explain as explain away.

I’d like to speculate that many of these reports might have a third explanation – natural law. But a specific operation of natural law that we don’t normally see, because most of us are not ourselves holy and don’t live in the presence of holiness.

Jesus told the disciples that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, they could move mountains.

Was he saying that God would do it for them? Or – and this is my speculation – was he saying that the world conforms itself to the wishes and needs of a saint?

If you can, put your preconceptions to one side, and speculate with me. Some of you may balk at the initial premises – that God exists; that the story in Genesis 2 and 3 is based on handed down memories of real events; that Jesus did and said exactly what the Gospels record (though not necessarily in that order and, of course, not only those things). Stretch a little. Let yourself imagine.

The idea that the creation of humankind was the point of the creation of the universe is hopelessly anthropocentric . We have no idea what else is out there. But the first chapters of Genesis strongly hint that this one earth was meant to be a place welcoming to and comfortable for humankind.

All the inimical things; all the terrors and forces of nature, were – in the first days – subject to humankind.

God created a garden. It was a strange place. All the things that grew in it were good to eat. The animals were all subject to the humans – and gentle with one another. Violent death and disease were unknown.

The people were made for the place – they were there to cultivate the garden, to study and learn about (name) the animals, and – as it transpired – to make an attempt and fail at the great task of faithful confidence in God – but the place was also made for the people. We can see that the place conformed itself to the needs of the people when we look at the new conditions that Adam faced after the Fall –the earth would produce thorns and thistles, and Adam would need to perform ‘painful toil’ to wrest from it food for himself and his family.

Failing that first step in the journey of becoming fully human, Adam and Eve lost their power over nature.

Fast forward to the next man in history to enjoy the pre-Fall condition – the one that St Paul calls the second Adam. The stories about Him show someone in control of the environment – walking on water, passing through solid doors, being seen in places far distant from one another at the same time. After He came back from death, He could even change how He looked, sometimes looking different enough that those who knew Him didn’t recognise Him at first sight.

St Paul hints that humankind’s failure to reach potential has also limited the rest of creation – indeed, that the rest of creation longs for humankind to fulfill their destiny as children of God, so that it, too, can reach fulfillment:   “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.”

I think it reasonable to speculate that Jesus – the first human to complete the journey into fulfillment of the human potential – had the fullness of the power over nature that was intended for humankind.

So what of those who share in the nature of the second Adam? All things, we are told, work together for the good of those who love God.

I don’t find it strange that nature attempts to meet the needs of saints. If my speculations are anywhere near correct, it’s only natural.

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Signs and wonders

In my first post on miracles, I came up with (and gave my justification for) a definition of the term ‘miracle’. A miracle is an intervention by the supernatural. Any other reasonably probable explanation must be more likely.

In the second post, I discussed the justification for using an even wider definition of the term – in effect, anything that is seen by someone as a sign that God is intervening in nature. And, as I acknowledged, by this definition everything is a miracle.

In this post and the one after, I’d like to narrow things down again, and look just at those miracles that appear to be outside of the natural law. My speculation is that there are two different types of event outside of the natural law as we know it. I’ll be arguing that a lot of what we class as miracles are, in fact, just the natural law operating as it should (though affected in ways we don’t yet understand by the non-physical world). They qualify as miracles by the definition given above only if you regard the spiritual realm as non-natural or supernatural.

Then, in my next post, I’ll finally get down to the real deal – direct interventions by God – ‘real’ miracles, in the strictest definition of the word.

I was going to do one post on each – natural law ‘miracles’ and direct interventions – but I wrote too much! J

DISCLAIMER: If wild speculation annoys you, read no further. Many of the ideas in this post are highly speculative; I offer them as a brain-stretching exercise rather than a serious statement of beliefs. Some bits may be true. I have no idea which bits, and I have no suggestions to offer as to how some of my ideas might be tested. But I also have no intention of assuming that, just because I can’t test something, it isn’t true – or even that, just because I haven’t imagined something, it isn’t true.

Natural laws we don’t know about yet

The physical world contains things that are more than merely physical. One end of the spectrum of things non-physical but real is not contentious at all – take the brain and the mind, for example. The brain – with its neurons, its chemicals, and its electrical activity – is the physical substrate that allows the mind to exist. Over the years, I’ve written about and read up on studies of animal intelligence, and the search for artificial intelligence, both of which highlight the amazing mystery which is human sentience.

The other end of the spectrum is where the charlatans and the crackpots cluster, selling a lot of pure nonsense to the gullible and the desperate. I know people who reject the existence of the whole spiritual realm on the basis that their Auntie Mary spent the family silver on a crock of fools gold from a local cult. To my mind, this is a foolish overreaction. The proof that the container is full of bathwater is not proof that there is no baby.

Irish witches

My mother-in-law was an Irish witch – one of those unsettling people whose strike rate for knowing things they couldn’t know was way higher than average. Of course pure coincidence might explain why she made her sons bed on the morning of the day he arrived without warning almost a week earlier than expected. Coincidence might also explain all the other instances of seeming prescience on her part and on the part of many others I have known. And it might be coincidence that such events cluster in the lives of some and not others.

I think rejecting the alternate theory – that such people somehow (sometimes, without much control over whether or not it happens) tap into the minds of others – simply because it could have been coincidence is a good example of the rationalist fallacy which I’ve discussed before on this blog. Knowing you have an explanation that fits your idea of the universe is not proof that you have the explanation. (Yes, I realise that knife cuts in both theist and non-theist directions.)

As hinted above, I’m not proposing this as true miracle – rather, I’m suggesting the possibility of the kind of interconnectedness proposed by Jung and others; an interconnectedness that some are more sensitive to.

Another example of the same sort of thing is the atmosphere – even personality – that some buildings seem to contain. Again, some people seem to be more sensitive to this than others. I have a child who picks these things up – who complained bitterly about one room in a house we lived in until we had it blessed (we were unsurprised to find someone had died there in a fire); who wept when we took her to the Auckland casino and couldn’t be consoled till we left the building. And many people comment on the sense of prayer that appears to permeate places that have been hallowed for a long time.

Any teacher can tell you that a class has a personality, made up from – but also influencing – the personalities of the individual members. 

These are natural things. They are hard to pin down and tricky to study. They seem to me to point to the existence of something that is not physical, or at least not primarily physical.

Coming soon: the second half of this post – works of faith, and natural law and the saints.

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Miracles of Lourdes

I’ve just come across this, and thought it might interest some of you:

February 10, 2010. Catherine Latapie was the first person to be miraculously cured at Lourdes.  She was healed of paralysis in 1858.  And on the same day she was cured, she gave birth to a boy who later became a priest. 

Her spectacular cure was a test case that started an era of reported miracles that’s lasted ever since.  These claims have increased over the years, and led to the setting up of a “Medical Bureau” at the Marian shrine in 1905. The office studies cases of those who claim to have been miraculously cured.

Dr. Patrick Theillier
Head of Medical Bureau, Lourdes
“We’re receiving on average fifty voluntary and spontaneous declarations a year – that works out at almost one a week”.

About ten of these declarations will go on to be fully investigated.  The goal: to ensure the cure is genuine and there’s no natural medical cause.

Dr. Patrick Theillier
Head of Medical Bureau, Lourdes
“Of course, people get better here simply by being in Lourdes, taking effort, time and money to come here. It’s normal that people will feel better for coming here, so I’m very prudent with each case”.

Prudence is a key word for Doctor Theillier.  It takes a minimum of 10 years to recognize if a person has been miraculously cured.  The most recent certified miracle belongs to an Italian woman healed of a heart condition in 1952.  The Church formally recognised the miracle  in 2005.

Dr. Patrick Theillier
Head of Medical Bureau, Lourdes
“There are three phases: the claim of the patient, the work of the doctors, and the Church’s confirmation”.

The work of verification is meticulous and complex.  Research is carried out by Dr. Theillier and his medical assistants before being passed on to the Church to make the the final decision. 

Dr. Patrick Theillier
Head of Medical Bureau, Lourdes
“The cure must have taken place immediately, instantaneously, and without convalescence. These are important and distinctive criteria because they don’t occur in the field of normal medicine”.

Since the 1st Lourdes miracle in 1858, 8000 claims have been made… and registered by the Medical Bureau. But the number of genuine miracles is much smaller.

Dr. Patrick Theillier
Head of Medical Bureau, Lourdes
“In the last 149 years, only 67 miracles have been officially acknowledged by the Church.  Therefore, less than 1 percent are recognized as genuinely miraculous.  This proves that the Catholic Church doesn’t run after miracles, she is always very prudent with these cases”. 

Physical miracles are an extraordinary phenomenon… but many other pilgrims make their way to Lourdes for moral healing or spiritual comfort… less spectacular miracles perhaps, but nevertheless important for those Catholics coming to the most important Marian shrine in Europe.

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Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles

In my last post on miracles, I defined a miracle as an intervention by the supernatural. Before I get on to discussing miracles that appear to be outside of nature, I’d like to talk about the Christian belief that God intervenes in the world constantly, through natural laws, human action and the operation of coincidence.

Everyday miracles

Let’s clear up one potential source of confusion straight away. Non-believers use the word miracle to mean something that cannot be explained in other ways; believers use the word miracle in a far more casual way. We see God’s hand in everything:

• in the wonders of creation, in a universe charged with the grandeur of God
• in everyday events and ideas, as the Holy Spirit continues to hover over the world
• in coincidences – or Godincidences, as some call them
• in the miracle of human conception
• in the sacraments of the Church.

Charged with the grandeur of God

Some theists talk as if the universe was a clockwork model; wound up and given its natural laws, then left to its own devices. If you imagine a linear scale, with believers in a clockwork universe at one end, Catholics would be at the other. We see a world charged with the grandeur of God. We think that God works through the natural laws, and we admire the beauty he has created. If we talk about the beauty of a sunset, at one level we know that the sunset is the result of a complex series of interactions between sunlight, sun position, and atmospheric conditions, and that what it looks like is a matter of perspective. At another level, we thank God for making those interactions, for making us able to perceive the aesthetics, and for allowing us to be in the right place and the right time to notice the sunset. Giving God a score out of 10 may seem a bit cheeky, but it was intended as a tribute, honest.  🙂

So we constantly use the term ‘miracle’ as shorthand for ‘wonderful’. As I said in the last post, I believe this usage is valid, though I think it can be confusing in discussions with non-believers.

The Holy Ghost over the bent world broods…

Beyond that, we believe that God continues to animate and to work within His creation. We believe the promise that ‘all things work to the good of those who love God’, and we look for the opportunities to grow in the things that happen to us.

When we talk about God using a computer glitch or a tantruming child to teach us patience, we don’t mean that God caused the glitch or the tantrum in order to teach us patience. But we do see that frustrations offer us the opportunity to learn patience. Further, we believe that those who are open to God’s ‘nudge’ will be in the place they need to be to learn the lesson they need.

Beyond that, we see that God works through people who are willing to let Him do so – St Catherine of Sienna said something to the effect: ‘God has no hands in the world but yours’. We are called to be Christ for one another, and when we conform our will to God’s will, we become channels of His grace, and see in others opportunities for grace.

This is not a miracle in the sense used by non-believers, but rather an openness of mind to the will of God. We who believe turn to God as often as we remember, seeking His will on how we should act or react in every situation that comes along.

Godincidences

I have friends who refuse to believe in coincidence – everything is in God’s plan, they say. Do I believe that God knows what is happening no matter where in time it happens? Yes. And, of course, this means that (from my perspective) He knows the future. Does this mean He can suggest I should be somewhere I can take advantage of an opportunity I need? Yes, and I might even be listening! This will appear to me as a coincidence, but I’ll still give thanks to God for it!

The miracle of life

One Catholic doctrine that is relevant to a discussion of everyday miracles is our belief that every human soul is a unique creation: a meld of a physical body provided through the union of a sperm and an ovum, and a spirit individually breathed by God. Therefore, when we say that every human baby is a miracle, we mean that in the most literal sense. A miracle – a direct intervention from God – touches every baby at the moment of conception and makes it human.

Being a Tabernacle

The other relevant belief is the belief in the sacraments. The sacraments are an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Before He died, Jesus left us with a way in which we can share directly in His life; a way that He can come into us and change us over time. This is, of course, the sacrament known as the Eucharist. At the words of consecration, time ‘wrinkles’, putting the whole Church in Heaven and on Earth in the upper room, at the foot of the Cross, and in the tomb at the moment of the resurrection. The bread and the wine – while retaining their outward semblences to the senses – become the body and the blood of Christ. When we receive the Eucharist, Christ comes into us and begins to change us to be more like Him. We become (briefly) Arks of the Covenant; Tabernacles of the most High. Now that’s a miracle.

Next, I’ll talk about the miracles where natural laws seem to be suspended – starting with the strange way that natural laws work around the saints.

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