Miracles

[FightingFat]

I need to find proof of miracles. I know the Church has strict rules on this sort of thing and that when a new saint is beatified, they have to have miracles asigned to them.

Where can I find documented evidence of this sort of thing?

 

[nobody]

Bump. Good question. Anybody?

 

[puzzleannie]

the gospels are full of accounts of miracles worked by Christ, and the proof is the testimony of witnesses and the protection of the Holy Spirit in the compilation of the Scriptures.

 

[nobody]

I don’t know if this was the intention of the original poster, but I thin what he/she’s asking about is documentation for the miracles that hae been attributed to saints.

Pope John Paul II has canonized many saints. Is the documentation for their miracles published somewhere?

 

[jeffreedy789]

yes. where? dunno.

 

[Todd_Easton]

You might want to check out Paul Glynn’s book Healing Fire of Christ: Reflections on Modern Miracles

 

[puzzleannie]

this is covered in several other threads on canonization process and saints, so this is just a quick recap of something better explained by others. look at the CA tract on saints also. The formal canonization process only goes back about 1000 years mas o menos, and the requirement for miracles as evidence of virtue and holiness is later still. Butler’s lives of the saints is the classic compendium of lives of the saints, including miracles worked in their lifetimes and after death for those asking for the saint’s intercession. At least in modern times (the last 200-300 years) medical miracles required independent investigation by medicial science as proof. this is certainly the case for healings reported at places like Lourdes. There is a library or archives at Lourdes that contains all the evidence of healings deemed miraculous, and the standards are pretty rigorous. Of the thousands of healings reported or claimed, only a few hundred have been judged true miracles and true healings by medical science.

Where the evidence of the investigation of the lives of individual saints, including miracles attributed to their intervention, is archived I have no idea, presumably in the office of the Vatican responsible for that investigation. Certainly the results of the investigations are made public at the time of beatification and canonization.

 

[twf]

The Stigmata is very well documented…to such a degree that there are scientific theories that attempt to explain it away. I don’t have direct documentation on hand…but there is an entry on it in “100 Strangest Unexplained Mysteries”, a secular book, by Matt Lamy. This book also mentions Fatima. Our Lady, when she appeard to the children on several occasions, promised a wonder that would make people believe. 70 000 witnessed the wonder she promised. See fatima.org/essentials/facts/.
There is also mention of a couple Marian apparitions. Here’s an exert:

One of the first miracles to be captured by the world’s media occurred in April 1968. In the town of Zeitun in Egypt apparitions of the Virgin Mary started to mysteriously appear. These bizarre sights lasted for over three years and were viewed by over a million people firsthand. Countless more across the globe saw them after they were filmed by the Egyptian television and photographed by the world’s press. Even Egypt’s Marxist dictator, President Nasser, who was an atheist by nature, visited the site and saw the apparitions in person. To check the pehenomenon was not a hoax or a prank, Egyptian police scoured a 95 mile radius around Zeitun…but found nothing.

This type of phenomenon, the spontaneous apparition, has become one of the most widespread modern miracles…On Christmas Day that same year [1995], people all around the city of Teheran in Iran reproted seeing the image of CHrist appear on fences and building walls. Despite the fact the overwhelming majority…are Muslim, all witnesses believed they had seen visions of Jesus…An image of the Virgin Mary appeared on a roof of a San Francisco churhc, and visitors reported smelling an unsourced scent of rose petals. Another church in South Australia had a picture of the Holy Mother manifest itself on an inside wall and a spring of water with healing properties was found underneath the building. The most impressive example occured for three weeks around Christmas 1996, when almost half a million people saw the Virgin Mary on a black glass building in Florida. The image measured 50 feet wide and 35 feet tall, and remained inexplicable despite the fact that local scientists and academics stuided the apparition at length.