The Roman Catholic Church has a process—to its credit, not a completely ridiculous one—by which it certifies some healings there as miraculous. Although the process isn’t completely ridiculous, it’s far from obviously bulletproof; the main requirement is that a bunch of Roman Catholic doctors declare that the alleged cure is inexplicable according to current medical knowledge.
I went to medical school in Ireland and briefly rotated under a neurologist there. One time he received a very nice letter from the Catholic Church, saying that one of his patients had gotten much better after praying to a certain holy figure, and the Church was trying to canonize (or beatify, or whatever) the figure, so if the doctor could just certify that the patient’s recovery was medically impossible, that would be really helpful and make everyone very happy.
The neurologist wrote back that the patient had multiple sclerosis, a disease which remits for long periods on its own all the time and so there was nothing medically impossible about the incident at all.
I have only vague memories of this, but I think the Church kept pushing it, asking whether maybe it was at least a little medically impossible, because they really wanted to saint this guy.
(the neurologist was an atheist and gleefully refused as colorfully as he could)
This left me less confident in accounts of medical miracles.
I’m under the impression that the canonization process used to be more selective, until Pope John Paul II lowered the evidence bar and started mass producing saints.
The easy out for a weakening religious authority, but soon people will have to be taking wheel barrows of saints to get their miracle of five fishes and two loaves.
I went to medical school in Ireland and briefly rotated under a neurologist there. One time he received a very nice letter from the Catholic Church, saying that one of his patients had gotten much better after praying to a certain holy figure, and the Church was trying to canonize (or beatify, or whatever) the figure, so if the doctor could just certify that the patient’s recovery was medically impossible, that would be really helpful and make everyone very happy.
The neurologist wrote back that the patient had multiple sclerosis, a disease which remits for long periods on its own all the time and so there was nothing medically impossible about the incident at all.
I have only vague memories of this, but I think the Church kept pushing it, asking whether maybe it was at least a little medically impossible, because they really wanted to saint this guy.
(the neurologist was an atheist and gleefully refused as colorfully as he could)
This left me less confident in accounts of medical miracles.
I’m under the impression that the canonization process used to be more selective, until Pope John Paul II lowered the evidence bar and started mass producing saints.
Saint inflation.
The easy out for a weakening religious authority, but soon people will have to be taking wheel barrows of saints to get their miracle of five fishes and two loaves.
But what happens if we measure saints per capita? After all, the 20th century’s population explosion presumably had a radical effect on saint density.