Regarding lay healers, I just want to share this experience I had recently.
A good friend of mine invited me to come to an Eddie Stone healing service in Dublin, saying he was a charismatic catholic lay faith healer. I looked him up and found precious little on the web - but one video of one of his services on Youtube showed people queuing for a blessing, then he would lay his hands on them and many of them would ‘lay in the Spirit’. My first impression was ‘this is very Protestant sort of behaviour with the whole laying of hands and all’ and I wasn’t sure if it was kosher. But my friend reassured me, so when I arrived into the packed church, the first thing I saw was the Blessed Sacrament exposed, so I knew I was in safe hands. Eddie Stone was giving an introduction talk before praying the Rosary with everyone. Every so often he would stop and say that the Lord was telling him he wanted to heal a person with blindness, or bone problems, or finding it difficult to forgive, whatever. And he would be able to pick them out of the packed congregation! He even brought up a little girl who had been cured of blindness from birth at one of his previous healing services. It was powerful! Following the Rosary was Holy Mass, and Eddie Stone was walking around by the back of the pews where I was standing as it started and I saw a woman go up to him and ask for a blessing. He replied ‘Not now, the Mass is on.’ After the Mass, during which confessions were ongoing, he spoke about the charism of blessing and then everyone was invited forward for a blessing. In some cases he was allowed read their souls and would talk to them briefly; many people were ‘laying in the Spirit’.
So coming away I was convinced of the Catholicity of the whole thing - he was a true servant of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit had given him a special gift - the gift of healing. He was very clear that it was the Lord working through him and not himself that was doing the healing.
In the Bible, there are many examples of healing - Jesus commanded his disciples to go out and heal the sick as they spread his Gospel - ‘By their fruits you shall know them’.
St Paul speaks of the gifts of the Spirit, and though I don’t have any solid references to the Bible handy, I know they are there, and ‘laying in the Spirit’ and ‘laying on of hands’ is also spoken of in the Bible.
So I amn’t so sceptical of faith healers now as I was a few weeks ago. I believe many of them are genuine, and with the support of such Catholic public figures as Fr Benedict Groeschel and Fr Mitch Pacwa, both of EWTN, I know Eddie Stone, who by the way is married with kids, is one of the genuine faith healers of the Lord.
