The TimesOnline is running an article claiming that Pope Benedict is about to beatify Cardinal Newman on faulty grounds. According to the article, the alleged miracle (the quick alleviation of spinal pain of a deacon who had back surgery) has been dismissed by numerous surgeons who claim that the alleviation of pain is actually fairly common. The article also pursues a line of argument suggesting that Newman was opposed to papal authority, and that it is comically ironic to beatify a man who (as the article would have it) pretty much thought the papacy was a joke.
I can't say that I'm enough of a Newman scholar or a neurosurgeon to weigh in on the veracity of either issue, but my thoughts on this are twofold.
First, I'm reluctant to trust a news source -- particularly a British news source -- to accurately depict the views of Cardinal Newman or the case for his sainthood. Oh, the article throws around a lot of Latin and goes into detail about the process of canonization in general, but it provides precious little information on Newman's case in particular. The only details concerning Newman that the article seems interested in are 1) that he converted to Catholicism, 2) that he didn't want to be canonized, 3) that his miracle might be spurious, and 4) that he has two soundbites that make him seem antipapist.
The article is trying to suggest that Cardinal Newman was something like Monty Python's Brian. He can protest his own holiness all he wants, but that merely makes the religious idolize him all the more for humility.
Second, how problematic would it be if the miracle had other potential explanations? That is, can coincidence be sufficient for an event to be miraculous? I suppose what I am questioning is whether the miraculous could simply be what Freud might call the "uncanny" -- our sense that coincidence suggests a deeper meaning. Personally, I think we are always safer when the miraculous is a straight-up supernatural event -- a suspending or manipulation of nature that is beyond scientific understanding. Of course, even this definition of a miracle is problematic as science advances in its knowledge. Is it so unimaginable that a day might come for the world when all miracles have a possible explanation? In such an imaginary world, a miracle would no longer be the impossible--it would merely be the highly improbable. Coincidence, really, is a measure of the highly improbable; coincidence evokes a feeling of the miraculous, even if it is still within the confines of natural possibility. Thus, the day might come when miracles are gauged not by possibility but by probability. It might not be merely that a particular event occurs, but when it occurs that contributes to his miraculous nature. I recall once watching an archaeological documentary on Exodus where the narrator mused that there could be various possible explanations for the parting of the Red Sea. It need not have been beyond natural causes. But that the Red Sea parted at the moment most convenient for an escape would certainly seem and feel miraculous...and so why not be miraculous?
Of course, this is just fancy. It could well be that miracles will never be explicable. It could well be that the miracle attributed to Newman is problematic.
In any event, I still think the Pope has more credibility to argue who is worthy of the saintly title than the TimesOnline, and I'm confident that the Vatican spent more time researching Newman's case than a journalist.
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