Do Catholics Have To Believe In Miracles?

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niceatheist said:
Apparently, if the subtext of the film is to be believed, the more people you have praying for you, the better your odds I guess if the boy had had fewer friends or was adopted by the wrong parents of the wrong faith (say Hindu or Zoroastrian), he would have been toast.
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He isn’t anymore likely to heal someone with a million people praying for them than He is to heal someone with no one praying for them. He heals whom He heals in accordance with His perfect will.

(This, of course, is not to say that prayer is not a praiseworthy or efficacious act. It is simply to acknowledge that God is not a vending machine)
niceatheist said:
And yet could one be a Christian and not accept modern claims of miracles? Could one be generally skeptical of such claims, not imagine God as a picker of winners and losers, all justified because He’s a lot smarter than us, which just seems more an empty dismissal of skepticism.
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Christianity is, at its heart, mystical and supernatural. To profess that there are no miracles at all is to strip the religion of its very essence. I’d say that’s incompatible with the faith.

Skeptism of individual claims is fine. I’m skeptical of quite a few myself. But, miracles are possible and they do happen.
 
niceatheist said:
I guess my question is whether you have to believe such claims of miraculous healing to be a Christian? Is skepticism incompatible with Christianity?
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Skepticism of the supernatural in general is incompatible. Skepticism of any individual claim is of course possible. If the National Enquirer tells me Jesus appeared in a baked potato, I’m of course not obliged to believe it.
 
niceatheist said:
And yet could one be a Christian and not accept modern claims of miracles? Could one be generally skeptical of such claims, not imagine God as a picker of winners and losers, all justified because He’s a lot smarter than us, which just seems more an empty dismissal of skepticism.
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First of all, that movie was created to make a profit. It was NOT created to present the reality of Christianity so please don’t get you teachings of the faith from Hollywood. Seek the bible and the Cathechism.

As for ‘picking winners and losers’. Yes, from our perspective, it can seem like some people have all the luck and others don’t. However, that is from OUR VERY LIMITED perspective. Look at the life of the saints, they suffered yet they were canonized. Personally, I think that the people in accidents that die, if they are in a state of grace are the lucky ones. They to straight to heaven. Perhaps the only reason God cures some people is because He is giving them a chance to repent as oppose of them going to Hell.

It’s really easy to think people who have secular goods are happy, but don’t be fooled by that
 
I think martyrdom makes it worse. That peopl died for their faith is something I can understand. They expected no Earthly reward, and viewed their sacrifice as not unlike Christ’s. They weren’t miraculously saved at the last possible moment.

And again, if the only explanation of why some people are miraculously cured and others are not is that God’s ways are inscrutable, then that doesn’t decrease the feeling of arbitrary works, it only underlines that there are a set of apparent rules beyond review or understanding that one just has to accept.

I guess the core of my question is does one have to view God in that way, that He’ll save a skydiver whose chute doesn’t open, but leave millions of Jews to be tortured and murdered? Would it be incompatible with Christianity to reject that view of God?
 
So lets talk about skepticism in specific instances. If I think Fatima was the product of mass hysteria, or think the Shroud of Turin is a late Medieval hoax, can that square with being a Catholic. If I view the Eucharist as a miracle, but still think improbable healings are still more likely explained as natural events, is that still to be a Christian in good standing?
 
niceatheist said:
So lets talk about skepticism in specific instances. If I think Fatima was the product of mass hysteria, or think the Shroud of Turin is a late Medieval hoax, can that square with being a Catholic. If I view the Eucharist as a miracle, but still think improbable healings are still more likely explained as natural events, is that still to be a Christian in good standing
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Yes and yes. I’m a little suspicious of Fatima and the shroud myself. There’s nothing wrong with thinking improbable healings are likely natural events. If you believe they couldn’t possibly be supernatural because you are just a hardcore materialist, then no, you can’t square that with Christianity.
 
niceatheist said:
So the moral here is that if you don’t have people praying for you, God won’t help.
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Well, as Catholics, we do believe that God works through prayer. The how, though, is still a mystery, in part because it can’t be answered until we answer certain questions regarding the relationship between God’s sovereignty and our free will. The mechanics of how God uses prayer may change depending on if you’re, for instance, a Molinist or a Thomist. Even then, why God doesn’t seem to answer prayers consistently (by our perception at least) isn’t understood. We might be able to understand the existence of some higher desires of His, but we cannot know how that factors in. Molinism, for instance, would require us to understand the entire possibility space of all potential timelines, which is obviously outside our ability to comprehend. Even if the “rules” are simple, what we must judge by them is simply incomprehensible.

All of our ignorance aside, we would believe that God uses prayer as a vehicle for performing a miracle. However, it isn’t the only one (e.g. Marian apparitions probably weren’t prayed for specifically), and it probably isn’t contingent on how many are praying or how specific they are being.
 
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Some healthy skepticism is a good thing. I’m the biggest skeptic I know. I’m the doubting Thomas of the group. I don’t go for overly emotional, flowery expressions of piety, I appreciate the reason and philosophical tradition of the Church.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Some healthy skepticism is a good thing. I’m the biggest skeptic I know. I’m the doubting Thomas of the group. I don’t go for overly emotional, flowery expressions of piety, I appreciate the reason and philosophical tradition of the Church.
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So if you were confronted with a story like the one above, you feel your faith would still be firm even if you found that there were more mundane explanations (like water temperature and excellent health care)?
 
Yes, a Christian can accept or reject specific events’ being miraculous. They cannot be Christian without believing in the particular set of miracles described in the Bible, of course.
 
niceatheist said:
So if you were confronted with a story like the one above, you feel your faith would still be firm even if you found that there were more mundane explanations (like water temperature and excellent health care)?
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You’ve mentioned a few, so, I can only answer in generalities.

My entire childhood/teenage was spent neck deep in protestant faith healers. Because of my history, I have a very deep skepticism about any claim of a miracle. I trust those that have been investigated by the Vatican because I have studied their processes. VERY few claimed miracles can stand up to the Church’s investigation.
 
niceatheist said:
… the boy’s recovery being a miracle … if the subtext of the film is to be believed, the more people you have praying for you, the better your odds I guess if the boy had had fewer friends or was adopted by the wrong parents of the wrong faith (say Hindu or Zoroastrian), he would have been toast. …
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"To discredit the countless miracles that had been given in confirmation of the Catholic faith, the original Protestant Reformers utterly rejected the idea that miracles had continued beyond the apostolic age.

However, when the Pentecostal movement began in Protestantism in 1900, with its emphasis on miraculous healing and other charisms, the Pentecostals had to find ways to try to explain why such miracles had “vanished” for so long. The answer is that they never did, as the following quotes of the early Church Fathers show. Miracles have always been found in the Catholic Church, and the idea that they stopped with the death of the last apostle would have been foreign to the early Church Fathers."
Irenaeus wrote in 189 A.D.:
“[Heretics are] so far . . . from being able to raise the dead, as the Lord raised them and the apostles did by means of prayer, and as has been frequently done in the [Catholic] brotherhood on account of some necessity. The entire church in that particular locality entreating with much fasting and prayer, the spirit of the dead man has returned, and he has been bestowed in answer to the prayers of the saints”
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www.catholic.com

What the Early Church Believed: Miracles

To discredit the Catholic faith, the Protestant Reformers rejected the idea that miracles had continued beyond the apostolic age.
www.catholic.com www.catholic.com
 
Catholics aren’t required to believe any miracles that aren’t in the Bible. However, you seem to be bringing up the problem of evil in some of your posts.

That’s a giant topic. But there’s two (hopefully) helpful thoughts I have as to “why does God heal some and not others?” First, we don’t exist to be happy. God’s goal is to bring humanity in union with Him. There’s often pain in change and submitting to someone else’s will. Second, and you won’t find this notion in Protestantism, suffering interpreted properly brings us closer to God. Suffering can be used to make people holy.

With those in mind, there could be reasons God would allow someone to have a terminal illness. For one, it might draw them into a relationship with him. It’s a gift to be able to prepare for your death. Living in apathetic complacency is no life at all. Christ came to give us abundant life.

If I a mere mortal creature can think of a couple good reasons that God might allow this evil, isn’t it logical to assume God, who is infinity more intelligent, might have reasons we can’t see? So it seems to me.

Edit: I just remembered you brought up prayer. We don’t believe prayer works like that. It absolutely is not the case that if I pray enough God has to do what I say. Rather, true prayer transforms my will to God’s. God’s answer to “please God heal my mother” might well be “I’m sorry, no. But let me comfort you and share your burden.” That doesn’t mean the prayer is a waste.

(Edit 2: My mom is fine that’s a random example)
 
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niceatheist said:
But that wasn’t the part of the film that bothered me. It was the way the film insisted on the boy’s recovery being a miracle and danced around the issue of why that boy? The film itself makes clear that most, if not all people in such condition never recover, either dying or suffering severe neurological damage. So we’re left with a god that is both arbitrary and capricious. Apparently, if the subtext of the film is to be believed, the more people you have praying for you, the better your odds
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This is a very secular way to view things. “Better” is interpreted solely in terms of ones mortal life. For all we know , the boys who did not recover were all granted eternal bliss in Heaven, which is far “better” of an outcome than a mere extension of a mortal life. Also, as Aquinas said, God permits evil so that a greater amount of good results. Thus, God permits a drunk driver to hit a tree and lose custody of his kids (evil permitted, no miracle performed) so that a greater good can result (the driver reforms his life, becomes a better Dad than he ever could be, joins 12 step group and helps hundreds of alcoholics, etc). We see countless examples of that around us every day.
 
niceatheist said:
I’m not questioning the Biblical narrative, I’m questioning the notion that God will intervene in such an event as that portrayed in the film, and yet let hundreds or thousands of young people who end up in the same condition die? Is this a requirement of being a Christian?
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You seem to think there is something wrong with that. What exactly? You seem to claim that there is some injustice here. Where?

That is, can you construct an argument showing that helping one man and not helping another is unjust in itself?
 
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As a non-Christian, I think Catholics do NOT have to accept miraculous healings, because they really don’t know whether or not the healing was in fact miraculous. There are, however, certain other Christian denominations which do accept miraculous healings as a result of prayer and/or the laying on of hands.

But I am only speculating. I would, however, be interested in what knowledgeable Catholics (and other Christians) have to say about this topic.
 
I think God picking winners and losers based on rules so complex that we are just supposed to accept them on faith flies in the face of any attempt to justify Christianity on rational grounds.
 
The fact that Miracles do happen is something that has been demonstrated to the rigor of scientific inquiry.
In fact now days before the Church accepts and declares that a Miracle did in fact happen tries to be very exhaustive in verifying that any natural explanations have been ruled out.
The question then it seems to be, why when Miracles do occur happen to the people that experience them.
Something that many people have a hard time to grasp is the “permissive will of GOD” and many thing fall under it. Miracles is one of them, also why does GOD allow evil to exist. So many times we ask ourselves :Why did GOD allow Hitler or Stalin or Mao Tse-Tung allow to murder so many people. HE could have snipped the lives of these monsters and spared so much suffering. Of course the answer is primarily “Free Will” and secondly GOD is the creator of the Universe, every solitary molecule of matter was created by HIM. He knows where all the Atoms of the Universe are located at any instant in the life of the Universe and also knows how and when all will end. So concluding Miracles happen because GOD wills them to happen and since we do not know the mind of GOD we need to trust that HE has a good reason why the happen to whom they happen.
 
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