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blamebramptonMary McKillop was an Australian nun, who was excommunicated for basically being a complete Bolshie ratbag, but was nevertheless pretty cool as nuns go. She was re-communicated (what IS that called, Catholics?) before she died, and is now about to become Australia's first saint.
To become a saint, you need to be responsible for two 'miracles', and as far as I can tell, the vetting process for such miracles is quite stringent. (Having said that, it is impossible to tell, because the Catholic church is very secretive about these things.) I think it is quite likely that a sequence of events that Catholics would call a miracle took place, because in a very small percentage of cancer cases, people do actually just get better. All of my doctor and medical friends have mentioned it. It's not the sort of thing that happens at levels you want to count on, and there's probably a perfectly good scientific explanation that we just don't know about yet, but calling it a miracle is as good a way as dealing with it as any other if it brings the people involved joy.
And if the people who benefit from such luck are devout and have brought their communities together in prayer to a grumpy teaching nun who regularly frustrated bishops, it's not crazy for them to make a link. Though I would point out that such 'miracles' statistically occur in atheist and agnostic patients at the same rate. Though if you want to believe that's God screwing with our non-believing minds, I won't hold it against you.
However, the point of all this is that the ABC, in covering the story of the extremely nice woman who has just outed herself as the second miracle, quoted Cancer Australia's Prof Ian Olver: 'We would encourage people to believe that prayer will most often work through conventional medical treatment ...'
Ah scientist tact. Bless.
If you want to know more about Mary, BTW, you can read a decent short bio here. She was a bit more of a radical than it lets on, but you'll be able to read between the lines.
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kestrelsparhawk and lllazlllong ! I hope you both have a wonderful day!
To become a saint, you need to be responsible for two 'miracles', and as far as I can tell, the vetting process for such miracles is quite stringent. (Having said that, it is impossible to tell, because the Catholic church is very secretive about these things.) I think it is quite likely that a sequence of events that Catholics would call a miracle took place, because in a very small percentage of cancer cases, people do actually just get better. All of my doctor and medical friends have mentioned it. It's not the sort of thing that happens at levels you want to count on, and there's probably a perfectly good scientific explanation that we just don't know about yet, but calling it a miracle is as good a way as dealing with it as any other if it brings the people involved joy.
And if the people who benefit from such luck are devout and have brought their communities together in prayer to a grumpy teaching nun who regularly frustrated bishops, it's not crazy for them to make a link. Though I would point out that such 'miracles' statistically occur in atheist and agnostic patients at the same rate. Though if you want to believe that's God screwing with our non-believing minds, I won't hold it against you.
However, the point of all this is that the ABC, in covering the story of the extremely nice woman who has just outed herself as the second miracle, quoted Cancer Australia's Prof Ian Olver: 'We would encourage people to believe that prayer will most often work through conventional medical treatment ...'
Ah scientist tact. Bless.
If you want to know more about Mary, BTW, you can read a decent short bio here. She was a bit more of a radical than it lets on, but you'll be able to read between the lines.
Finally,
kestrelsparhawk and lllazlllong ! I hope you both have a wonderful day!
