Lead Commentary today: Do you believe in miracles & the efficacy of the rosary? (Main Forum)

Yes, Joseph. I think the evidence does point to the fact that I must be a "close-minded sort of person" and I am disbelieving of the evidence you have presented. The plain fact is, as I have tried to explain in my own responses to you, that I am disbelieving of the evidence from Fatima. I do not believe Our Lady has conveyed messages to the world, even the so-called Third Secret of Fatima, to the world via these children. I'm not sure though which of us would be harder to convince with any "evidence" though!

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Joseph re BC!

You appear to be a very close-minded sort of person

Couldn't resist a few smileys.

IMO Brian is actually one of the most open minded persons who I've ever come across, not that any proof is needed but one only has to read any of his posts, on a whole variety of topics, over many years, to realize that he is a 'seeker/searcher' and someone who doesn't have 'all the answers'.

Joseph,

Have you ever noticed that all the miracles that are supposed to have occurred as a result of going to Lourdes or Fatima, or because of the intercession of the people who are subsequently canonized, are always with things like cancer which are known to go into remission for reasons that are yet unexplained? And these remissions occur in people who have no one praying for them, or who are atheists or belong to other religions that do not believe in the Christian God, let alone his Holy Mother?

There is no case, that I know of where someone's amputated limb has grown back, and this could not be too hard for God to perform, because he has made lizards that grow their tails back.

There is no case of a person born with brain damage, being restored to having normal intelligence.

And there is no case of a person with Alzheimer's having their brain restored so that they recovered their memory.

Since Fatima, some Catholics have been praying for the conversion of atheist Russia. Well, the Soviet Union collapsed, and "Russia" has ceased being officially atheist, but it has hardly been converted. And if atheism is the problem, why hasn't Our Lady come back and told a couple more peasant children that they had better start praying for France, or Italy...and according to the latest census, Australia?

Maybe the folks staring at a tree should spend more time trying to see the Divine Presence in their neighbor.

And this is catechesis at its best - and what we are supposed to do - not stare at a bole hole in a tree!!

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

BobL thanks for your comments but I am a little dense. Your scriptural quote that Mary said do what He tells you supports my statement. Jesus was asked how do we pray and He gave us the Our Father. He didn't say pray to Mary nor did Mary say pray to me. I don't follow your logic. I am not saying it is wrong to pray to Mary or anyone else for that matter, I am just saying my interpretation of scripture is that Jesus said that the way to pray is the Our Father.

I do not doubt that some prayers were answered when Jesus turned 180 gallons of water into fine wine at Mary's direction.

I am curious why no one has answered my question on why ALL Roman Catholic clerics are called Father when Jesus specifically instructed us not to call anyone on earth father. (Matt.Ch.23) It might be a silly thing but it is there in scripture. I have asked numerous priests and Bishops and never received a proper answer. To me that might be an insight to the problems since the Church focuses more on its man made laws and ignores God's Laws. (The sexual abuse cover-up is the prime and worst example) My interpretation is that Father means God and the clerics were playing God for all the unwashed and the name went with the territory.

I was brought up with nightly Rosary as a priority but gave it up long ago once I left home. On the rare occasions I say it today I say it in the following way:

Creed - yes, I do believe in God.
Our Father - as a focus on prayer
3 Hail MNarys 1 for faith in God to increase
2 for sharing of Recurrection hope
3 to love as Jesus loves
Gloria - as praise.

e.g. First Joyful Mystery The Annunciation
Our Father - thanking God for Mary's courage and faith

1st Hail Mary " " for all who bring His Word to
us
2nd Hail Mary " " for teachers and ministers
3rd Hail Mary " " for translators/publishers etc.
4th Hail Mary " " for those who suffer because
the Word
5th Hail Mary " " for hearers of the Word
6th Hail Mary " " for those deceived by false
interpretation of the Word
7th Hail Mary " " for forgiveness of the
deceivers & false teachers
8th Hail Mary " " for greater love of the Word
9th Hail Mary " " for more time to read the Word
10th Hail Mary " " for all to live the Word

O my Jesus forgive us our sins ...
Gloria praise.

and so on for the 15 Mysteries. I have never taken up the later ones.

As far as believing in apparitions, from the way they have been exploited and politicized too often by clergy and others, I think Mary is also a victim of clerical abuse and the Church owes her a decent apology.

J A Holznagel

Why are these poor people always called 'devout Catholics'? They should be called 'poorly educated and superstitious Catholics'.

Most devout Catholics won't have a bar of such nonsense.

Annie

http://www.mrbreakfast.com/article.asp?articleid=23

Miracles and apparitions can be interpreted anywhere and in anything you are so inclined to "miraclise" (no such word ... but means the make into something miraculous)

cheers
BobL

desie

if i didn't believe in miracles i wouldn't be here today. When i was child and in the Hospital for 18 months ,i saw little lights dancing on the side of the cot, i was in a cot so i would not try and get out i was five years old, as i peared at the little lights i saw little angels dancing and tunbling around, i was fasinated and just lay there staring as i got older i spoke to my Mother about this telling her it was a gift from God, as i got older i saw them all the time. My thoughts every time in went to the Cathedral was to say hello to God and the Angels always asking them to please stop the bashing and assults on me that i was a good girl. i had the ability to know that people were in trouble and when i went to them they always asked how did you know, my answer always the Angels whispered to me to come. When i got to Palm beach Clinic for the long hall out of this torment i was speaking to Mum in bed , my Mother had died in 1999 I told her i had to go to the core of my being to then try and find out who l. I stirred at about 2 o'clock and there she was pulling up the covers and she kissed me and said i would be ok, i could smell the powder she had on her face. In 2006 when i was going for Victims Comp i was walking down the street and next minute there was a glow coming from my gut area, i stopped and looked down and saw this cob of corn without the corn three days later i found out about the saint Vitas dance which caused all my learning disabilities. mum and i wonder about this all the time why i couldn't do certain basic things and the SVD was the cause. I then was able to take charge of my life and start to teach myself as much as possible. these lights come all the time and when it happens i feel so at peace i always sit for a while and say thank you. so miracles yes to me but maybe no to others.

Macbee

Tony, There used to be a theological caution which I'm sure you'd be familiar with. It went along the lines of never to test God. I haven't seen it mentioned much in recent times but am ever conscious of it in that I sometimes wonder in what I've been doing with my life for the past 20 years is "testing God" — pushing things to an extreme limit in a lot of this stuff that I was brought up to believe actually has substance and how much is institutional propaganda, superstitions for the naive and gullible, snake oil salesmanship, etc.. Religion is such a profound mix of hugely deep human insights about so many things and, at the other extreme, it is literally a snake oil sales' endeavour. How do we sort the wheat from the chaff in this realm of our lives?

I've already mentioned the testing of the hypothesis of Fr Peyton that "the family that prays together stays together". It's a catchy slogan but I genuinely question today how much substance is contained in that slogan. (By the way I didn't set out to "test" it. I literally did believe that my rosaries would "protect" my family.) The big one that has intrigued me is these "birds of the air" sayings of Jesus and how much they spend their time in anxiety and worry. Watching the birds outside my window, which I've been doing now for about six years, the conclusion is that the little blighters seem to be very anxious a lot of the time, greedy also, and like human society populated by bullies and the meek and unassertive. In about 1991 or 1992 I made a personal commitment to live simply and try and live without all the usual security props in modern society like substantial capital, life insurance, superannuation and all those sort of things. A decade later, when I was working in the Catholic Education system a spate of books was published that roughly coincided with the centenaries, sesqui-centenaries or bi-centenaries of some of the major teaching and nursing orders that came to Australia. A common theme in some of those works was this idea of reliance on Providence and I have mentioned before the particular story of the Dominican nuns who came to the Geraldton diocese early in the 20th Century. To this day I don't know how much of it was "corporate or institutional mythology" and how real it was. Your story of the Little Sisters of the Poor has counterparts in the stories of almost all of the religious orders.

I've been intrigued not only at the personal level though. Back in the 1980s I took on this big endeavour called "The 1984 Project" — roughly set around the "coming of age" of George Orwell's book "1984" but it was also an examination of the question why Western Civilisation had become so dominant and successful globally in its spread to all corners of the world. As I've previously related, in the end I didn't get my program into production but the BBC did get a series to air, "The Triumph of the West" written and presented by Professor John Roberts which examined some of the things we were trying to put under the microscope in our endeavour. Sadly John Roberts' program had about one airing and then sank like a stone unlike Sir Kenneth Clarke's "Civilization" series and Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" series which had many, many replays. Western Civilization it can be argued was a child of Christian Civilization — the Holy Roman Empire and all that. One of the things that has long intrigued me is what relationship there was between the economic and financial success of Western Civilization and some of the foundational philosophies and "life outlooks" in Christianity and in particular Catholicism. It was interesting that in the recently produced and screened series by Niall Ferguson on what he called the "six killer apps" that gave Western Civilization its economic success he identified "Calvinism and the Protestant Work Ethic" as playing a huge part. He nominated that as one of the "six killer apps" [See Ted Talks video at the end of this post]. I have long been intrigued how much this belief in Providence also played a part that is ultimately sourced back to those sayings of Jesus to "Be Not Afraid", to "Put Out into the Deep — Duc in Altum", and the sort of sayings that we heard in the Sunday readings a couple of weeks ago — which mythologically or otherwise have supposedly played an important part in the ethos of many religious congregations and endeavours (and not just Catholic ones).

If the the star of Western Civilisation is today on the wane and the emergent economic superpowers in human Civilization turn out to be the Chinese or the Indians all of my speculation — and that of the likes of John Roberts and Niall Ferguson — might be worthless. It was neither Providence nor Protestant Work Ethics that were a determinant at all but purely the acumen of snake oil salesman and those who are good marketplace hagglers.

Guys like Edmund Rice have long intrigued me. Unlike Mary Mackillop for example, but similar to Emilie de Vialar (founder of the nuns who taught me, a French-based order, the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition — in Australia they only had foundations in Melbourne and Western Australia) he came from a relatively prosperous background. The propaganda is that they "gave it all away" and went off to "serve God". The irony is that they ended up building these massive enterprises around the world, long before most global corporations, that required massive capital infrastructure (just think of all the real estate and school buildings they owned around the globe). In Rice's case, had he continued on as a Ship's Provisioner – his business before he gave it all away to found the Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers – there is no way on God's green earth you could conceive of him building a commercial Ship's Provisioner business as large as the Edmund Rice Education enterprise became. How did they do it? Was it truly "built on Providence" or did they attract into their enterprises a good quota of "main chancers" and women (in the case of the female religious endeavours) and blokes with exceptional business, financial, organizational and management skills? In other words how much can it be truly claimed these enterprises were "a work of Providence" or "a work of God" and how much were they simply ordinary graft and corruption and the sort of rat commercial cunning that is to be found in any other walk of life, or down at any Saturday morning market in any city of the world? The current stories that are surfacing of what's been going on in the Vatican Bank are cause for concern in that they challenge an important element of the myth of Catholicism's reliance on Providence. Looking at the story of Edmund Rice one might be tempted to offer the advice to anyone who wanted to know how to become a successful "capitalist": go form a Catholic religious order!

In many ways the founders of the women's religious orders intrigue me even more. Many of them were operating long before the suffragettes and women's lib and the modern talk about glass ceilings. The enterprises some of these women built were the equal of anything that men were building and they didn't seem to be constrained by any "glass ceilings" at least at the level of the practical good they did in the world or in the capital size of the enterprises they constructed.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Miracles! Schmiracles! says it for me, although I know that existence and Creation go together for me, and I have known and experienced some things which are not readily explainable in "normal human terms". But, as our pscyh. used to tell us in prison "What is normal and who is to determine who is and who isn't?"

J A Holznagel

For many years, I believed eveything a good Caflick was told by his 'betters'.

Now, after evidence of the latest 50-odd years of 1700-odd years of physical and sexual abuse of children by clergy and Religious and the equally evil cover-ups by their even better 'betters', the question I am pursuing is did Jesus live at all, do and say anything which was jammed down our throats......or is it all a con, as I have come to believe it is?????????

Joseph, about the time of the Father Peyton Fatima crusades, there was a small book published called "More About Fatima" but I can't remember by whom.

It showed how the clergy and others exploited the "apparitions" and, since then, I cannot believe in any apparitions of Mary or anyone else. If you look closely at the behaviour of those around the cult of apparitions, it is nothing short of disgusting, and mattter what the message may be, it makes belief almost impossible. This does not only apply to Fatima, as there are worse cases today. One of the few things the Church may have done properly is to stand well back from declaring apparitions genuine and never making them articles of faith. As far as the sun dancing, mass hysteria is not unknown.

We are free to believe or not in both apparition or message. I choose not to believe and, having had the chance to visit some apparition sites, chose not to do so as what I heard from people who had visited them was not encouraging.

J A Holznagel

Joseph,

I know you do not want discussions with anyone other than Brian. So please ignore this post. It is included for others who may be interested in the developing discussion.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) makes only three references to the Rosary. None of these references place it as a pre-eminent requirement for existence even as a FTTM Catholic.

Item 2708
"Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him."

For what it is worth, I can find no mention in the catechism of Fatima nor compulsion to this specific prayer form.

You might even read into the Catechism quote an earlier point that making the rosary an end unto itself is dangerous and misguided.

Hope this helps.

cheers
BobL

Thanks, Joseph. I certainly read it to mean you were questioning my maturity, not simply the maturity, or otherwise, of my arguments.

Just in case you haven't picked up on this yet, I am arguing yes: the Rosary is important.

I certainly picked that up loud and clear, even as the implication in your first post.

I am also not prepared to discuss the so-called miracle in New York, as we both know it is completely absurd. Obviously, I think the Church is quite right to distance itself from it.

I find it comforting to read that.

My case for the Rosary I base entirely off the events at Fatima. I assume you agree that, if I am right about Fatima, you would have to agree that the Rosary is of extreme importance.

Yes, if I agreed you were correct about Fatima. But I disagree with your viewpoint on Fatima.

I think the most important thing in resolving, or at least developing, an intellectual argument is to identify the key point on which the two parties disagree, and home in on it - not to brush it off flippantly in one sentence as you did here:

"...I am disbelieving of the evidence from Fatima."

When you say you are disbelieving of the evidence from Fatima, do you mean:

a) you do not believe that thousands of people really did give testimony? or;

Yes, I am disbelieving of the testimony of "thousands of people". Thousands of people in the world are attracted to Lourdes, Medjugore, satanism, wicca, communism, hedonism, mass hysteria at pop concerts, and all sorts of political, religious and other beliefs. I am not simply persuaded by the numbers of people who are attracted to anything.

b) you do not believe the testimonies of the thousands of people?

If b, could you please point out holes in the testimonies of these people.

I can't recall you citing any testimonies that I might "point out the holes" in. I did provide, I thought, a pretty comprehensive critique of the "dancing sun" phenomenon which is often cited as strong "evidence" for the miraculous or spiritual significance of Fatima.

Also, it would be good if you could come up with a plausible, alternate theory that explains the events of Fatima without the involvement of the supernatural.

I don't think it is incumbent on any person to come up with "plausible, alternate theories". There are many, many things about life to which we simply do not yet have answers. At numerous points in this discussion I have pointed out we (human beings) still know very little about how the human brain and emotions work even though all of us use our brains and emotions everyday. I don't pretend to have the answers to things that humankind as a whole is still searching for answers to. There are many things in life though that one can be skeptical about. I presume there are many beliefs or theories in life that you might be also skeptical about and you believe some alternative to what might be believed by some majority, or by just large groups of other people.

To me the evidence is that God does not intervene in our soup. He does not reach his great hairy arm down and cause the sun to dance, or his intervention, or that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is some explanation for these visions that some people have. I do have a confidence that one day we might have some rational, scientific explanation as to why some have these visions and experiences but it might still be hundreds or thousands of years away before those explanations are accessible to us human beings. There are theologians who dispute the idea of an "interventionist God" and I cite in particular the Australian theologian Fr Denis Edwards and urge anyone to study his books and, in particular on this subject, "How God Acts". As one who studied physics as my initial calling in life I simply do not believe there is any evidence that God intervenes in Creation by suspending, breaking, or interfering with any of the natural laws of Creation. As I argued earlier in this string, if God wanted to prove to us his existence, one would have thought there might be evidence of it from looking up into the heavens and watching planets, stars and galaxies behaving in ways that suggested there was some "puppet master" operating at some higher realm. There is simply no evidence that that occurs. The stars, the planets, the galaxies all follow very predictable laws albeit that there are still many laws that we don't fully understand but we at least understand enough to be able to say there is nothing "unnatural" or "supernatural" that causes them to behave in the ways they do.

There is no evidence at our macro level either. As James suggested in a post further up this string, when we see God stitching or growing back a severed limb, or re-growing the brain of someone who has suffered some significant brain injury, then it might be the time for us to begin believing in miracles.

Thank you for giving your time to discussion with one of those poor, simple, superstitious folk who believes in miracles.

Yes, I can believe, in fact know from the evidence, that there are many people in the world who believe in miracles. As I suggested further up in one of my other responses, there are plenty of people attracted to all sorts of weird theories exploited on television by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and cynical media proprietors about ghosts, haunted houses, and all sort of paranormal and unusual phenomena. Do I "believe it all" just because Rupert Murdoch has found a way to make a bit more money by stirring up the lizard brains in society through titillation, incredulity and exploitation of the basest human emotions? Do you believe these sorts of programs on television because thousands of people do?

Could I ask you a question, Joseph? Further up this reply you have said you agree with me that the Church is quite right to distance itself from the phenomena that's currently happening in New York. How do you draw the line as to what the Church should support in these realms and what it should not support? For example, you have told us of your support for Fatima but what about the happenings at Medjugore? The Church seems to be non-committal or perhaps itself still confused and neither endorsing nor criticizing Medjugore. What are your beliefs about Medjugore and the authenticity of what is reported to have happened there?

My own position, to be quite frank with you, is that the Catholic Church, if it is to re-establish its credibility with the majority of educated people in the world needs to start distancing itself from all the "superstitious nonsense" and instead of (to use Benedict's words) "protecting the simple folk from the intellectuals" start educating them out of their superstitions and simple pieties. I don't believe superstitions and simple pieties get any person to heaven, or even provide other benefits in this life other than pacifying their emotional insecurities and giving them "warm fuzzies" in their tum-tums.

+PAX

Yes, +Pax in return and I hope you can accept I am endeavouring to be brutally honest with you in all the responses I've written in this string. I'm not going to write things I simply do not believe, or because the Pope, or ten thousand people who do believe in Fatima, have tried to convince me is not the way I see it.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Truth be told, I really came on because I love intellectual argument, and was hoping to find some here.

Joseph I know all about intellectual arguments, can engage quite well if I want to, but I actually nowadays find them very very boring. A bit like discussing how many nuts and bolts are in an engine or something. Particularly with regard to Jesus, Christ, faith, love, the way to life, I would prefer frank discussion of our experiences, our understandings, our doubts and our hopes.

So, sorry if I, for one, disappoint you.

... infallible, Supreme Editor-in-Chief of your Sacred Website.

Catholica is not my website, nor is Brian my "infallible, Supreme Editor-in-Chief".

I just come here to relax when the stress of business requires a little change of pace.

Gosh darn it, I'm not even a Catholic, so I don't have to turn the other cheek, and be reasonable. And I certainly don't feel any need to pay attention to your fraternal corrections.

Why am I so aggressive? Look to yourself and see if you can work it out. (I also have a quiverful of ad hominems that haven't even been used yet).

Maybe there is another explanation for the ridiculous blarney about the whole Fatima episode..
Could have been a goodly crop of 'Magic Mushrooms' growing in the paddocks where those children were watching the sheep.. !! [that was Fatima wasn't it?.. the sheep, I mean.}