[Dialogue] Am I Mother Teresa?

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

>From The  Times (of London)
 
April  5, 2007 
Did  John Paul II perform a miracle? Am I Mother Teresa?
Matthew Parris: My Week  
During  Holy Week we are treated to a variety of decent-sounding people in 
print and on  the airwaves explaining that religion — or “faith” as they now 
prefer to call it  — is basically all about shared moral values, making the 
world a better place  and gaining a proper sense of awe at life’s mystery. We are 
given to understand  that the great world religions are all really fumbling 
towards the same truth.   
And  by doveish voices we are urged to join what is essentially a campaign 
for  increasing the amount of goodness in the world. Who could be against that? 
Such  faith sounds so reasonable. Churlish nonbelievers like me are made to 
feel it is  we who are being arrogant, dogmatic, closed-minded. How can we be so 
sure? And  then this. A nun has apparently been cured of Parkinson’s disease 
through  writing the name of John Paul II on a piece of paper.  
Ecclesiastical  authorities in the Roman Catholic Church have been 
investigating the alleged  miracle, interviewing neurologists, graphologists, 
psychiatrists and medical  experts. The diocese of Aix-en-Provence is now satisfied that 
it has a  putative supernatural intervention on its hands, and this week 
submitted its  dossier to Pope Benedict XVI, who may declare an official miracle 
and begin  procedures for making the late Pope a saint.  
Meanwhile,  Gerard Baker (“‘_Israel right or wrong’ is not a  grown-up 
debate_ 
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article1588756.ece) ”, March 30) writes that one determinant of US foreign  policy 
towards Israel is the belief, widely held on the Religious Right, that  before the 
prophecy of the Second Coming and the end of the world can be  fulfilled, the 
Israelites must be given their Biblical lands of Judaea and  Samaria.  
Where  are you, intelligent Christians? Where is your voice, your righteous 
anger?  Where is your honest contempt for this nonsense? Take that claimed 
recent  miracle, for instance. I know lots of nice, clever Catholics — friends,  
thoughtful men and women, people of depth and subtlety, people of some 
delicacy,  people who would surely cringe at the excesses of Lourdes. Do they believe 
that John Paul II may  have cured this nun from beyond the grave?  
Where  are the shouts of self-respecting bishops and cardinal-archbishops, 
raised  against the woeful confusion of faith with superstition? I have a theory 
about  their reticence. I think they know this stuff is the petrol on which 
the motor  of a great Church runs; that without these delusions to feed on, the 
unthinking  masses would falter. And they may be right. But what a melancholy 
conclusion:  that the thinking parts of a religion should be almost 
extraneous to what moves  it; far from the core; just a little fastidious shudder; a 
wink exchanged  between the occupants of the reserved pews.  
There  is, of course, an alternative: that they too believe the nonsense; 
that the  Prime Minister’s wife (and maybe the Prime Minister), and the 
Communities  Secretary, and the Chancellor of Oxford University and former Governor of 
Hong  Kong — not to mention several of my colleagues on these pages in The  
Times — honestly entertain the possibility that from beyond the grave the  late 
Pope John Paul II interceded with God to cause a woman to be cured of  
Parkinson’s disease.  
You  are living, dear reader, at a watershed in human history. This is the 
century  during which, after 2,000 years of what has been a pretty bloody 
marriage, faith  and reason must agree to part, citing irreconcilable differences. 
So block your  ears to the cooing voices on Thought for the Day, and choose 
your side.   
“But  how can you be sure?” Oh boy, am I sure. Oh great quivering mountains 
of pious  mumbo-jumbo, am I sure. Oh fathomless oceans of sanctified babble, 
am I sure.  Words cannot express my confidence in the answer to the question 
whether God  cured a nun because she wrote a Pope’s name down. He didn’t. Mere 
language does  no justice to my certainty about whether God might be waiting 
for the return to  their Biblical lands of the Israelites, before arranging the 
Second Coming. He  isn’t.  
Shout  it from the rooftops. Write it on walls. Carve it into rock. He didn’
t. He  isn’t. He won’t.  
This  summer Gordon Brown is to publish a book, Courage, profiling eight 
human  studies in that quality. Whom has the politician chosen? Anyone dangerously 
 controversial? Mr Brown has selected Martin Luther King, Nurse Edith Cavell, 
 Robert Kennedy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Raoul Wallenberg (who saved Hungarian  
Jews), Dame Cicely Saunders (of the hospice movement), Aung San Suu Kyi and  
Nelson Mandela.  
Courageous  choices, Chancellor. No place here for Copernicus, though?   
No,  still a bit risky — he was only pardoned by the Vatican in 1993.   


Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
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