Damned if He Does; Damned if He Doesn't...

Drudge linked to an article on an investigation into a possible miracle at St. Mary's in Annapolis.

A woman undergoing treatment for terminal cancer became cancer free and has stayed so for several scans. She apparently had been praying to Blessed Francis X. Seelos, an apparently cheery immigrant who was ordained and died of yellow fever while administering to the sick.

The Baltimore Sun article to which Drudge linked spends quite a bit of time trying to explain the process of canonization for its general readership. It's important to keep in mind that the cure is under investigation -- it may well be determined that the treatment she was receiving was itself sufficient to explain her cure.

Then, you get to the comments section below the article. Ouch...(more below)

I would say a majority of the comments are from angry evangelicals (one even linked to a Chick comic) complaining that the Church is the anti-Christ for encouraging prayer to the saints. About a quarter of the comments I saw seemed to be atheists annoyed that the Church gives false hopes. Miracles make strange bedfellows out of evangelicals and atheists, but when you are being attacked by both of them, I guess you know you are doing something right, eh?

Several of the atheists seem to be complaining that the miracles that the Church reports aren't big enough and demanded that they would never believe in miracles unless an amputee suddenly grew a limb. Of course, if an amputee suddenly grew a limb, I'm fairly sure the commenter would decide that it was obviously a freak mutation (after all, certain species of salamanders can do it) and not divine.

That being said, why haven't we heard of a recent miracle of a regrown limb? I seem to recall plenty of old-timey saints having this kind of thing occur, but nothing that I can reliably point towards in our post-Enlightenment age. One commenter suggested that people simply don't pray for such things because deep down they know it can't happen and it might make them doubt the existence of God. Thus, the commenter argued that people only pray for things that are less improbable so they can feel like a miracle happened if they do occur.

I suppose some people operate like that, but an individual's psychological hang-ups do not prove or disprove supernatural phenomena.

It seems to me that the most obvious answer to the amputee question is that limb-replacement isn't exactly a high priority on the modern miracle scale. In the 21st Century, we have healthcare, welfare, and international charitable organizations to go into places that lack healthcare and welfare. What would such a miracle mean In a world with prosthetic limbs and even limb transplants? Today, the loss of a limb is a severe cross, but it doesn't necessarily lead directly to death.

God might heal a person with cancer because cancer isn't merely a burden -- it's a lethal disease. I've heard of more miracles involving the saving of life than involving the improvement in the quality of life (although, I pretty much count it a bona fide miracle any time I step out of a car without getting in an accident or having to stop at a public restroom).

Even more shocking, another atheist wrote that if God did heal this woman, then she had better be destined for some great deed in her remaining years. Otherwise, wrote the commenter, God is unjust for hearing an old woman's prayers and ignoring those of younger people with fatal illnesses. The commenter's logic was essentially that God had picked the wrong answer in a situation ethics game. If God has the power to save lives, why would he waste that power on an old woman rather than on a young person?

That is rather painful logic there, and I can only assume it derives from some kind of personal disappointment in life. It suggests that somehow we can quantify the value of human life and then compare those values against one another. How can one person's life have better value than another's? What method of evaluation is this person suggesting we use to determine whether the deeds of one person have been superior to those of another? Just the number of years? How those years are spent?

What if part of God's logic is precisely to dismantle secular views on what makes life valuable? Indeed, given the direction our country is headed in terms of healthcare, we might need a miracle like this right now. Consider how close our country is to socialized healthcare -- and how a concept of socialized healthcare can easily lead to precisely this kind of comparison between the value of lives. How soon will it be before doctors are making decisions just like this, wondering whether to spend limited resources on one elderly woman with only a few years left, or directing those resources towards a younger patient. Our society has already started suggesting that the elderly should just check out of the system and make room for the younger, the healthier, or the more attractive.

But that's not how God operates, and that's not how miracles work.

Miracles are not just about material existence -- they aren't just about healing people or making life easier. Miracles are a means by which God communicates His will. Saving an elderly woman is a means of communicating the value God puts on all human life, no matter its age, strength, or status in this world. Most importantly, big miracles seem to be meant to be didactic not practical. This is perhaps why God appears so selective in the big miracles. God performing a miracle is like a teacher with a very provocative lesson plan (and, as a teacher, I would certainly say that any time my lesson plans are provocative, it's definitely a miracle). Even if a teacher could come in every day and wow the class, the students wouldn't learn much. To learn, a student needs to do the homework on their own -- they can't have the teacher solve all the problems spectacularly all the time.

Miracles are pedagogical -- they are meant to teach us something of God's nature and God's will so that we can then take action ourselves. Miracles are not meant to be practical aids to living.

Comments

[Sebastian]

"Even more shocking, another atheist wrote that if God did heal this woman, then she had better be destined for some great deed in her remaining years. Otherwise, wrote the commenter, God is unjust for hearing an old woman's prayers and ignoring those of younger people with fatal illnesses."

Sounds like this commentator is destined to be Obama's new Healthcare "Czar".

I'm just glad my doctor doesn't demand I accomplish some feat of greatness before he renders to me any life-saving services.

[Peter Terp]

Don't give them ideas! You know how invested Obama is in volunteerism!

He might start requiring mandatory service hours for all healthcare recipients.