So what exactly is a Miracle? Can it be tested for?

[jmcrae]

jmcrae;4799108:

Not that I know of. Reports of individual instances appear in various Catholic magazines and newspapers, but I don’t know of any comprehensive collection.

Doesn’t one have to have performed an authenticated miracle to be made a saint? I’d have thought that must have some official documentation somewhere?

Yes, and we (the general population) would learn about these through various periodicals. I don’t know whether they keep everything in a filing cabinet somewhere, or what - once the miracles have been authenticated, I don’t know what happens to the documentation, other than that the fact of it gets reported in various periodicals so that we all can know what happened.

 

[Nebogipfel]

I don’t know about written documentation but just watch some of Benny Hinn’s shows. Every week he lines up a bunch of sick people, hits them in the face and presto they are cured. Definitely miracles and all done live in front of audiences of thousands. If he was catholic then he would probably already be declared a saint.

Well, I see lots of things on television - people who claim to be able to read minds, communicate telepathically with babies and aliens, or talk to the spirits of the dead. They are all… underwhelming, and there’s not a shred of reliable evidence that any of them can do the things they say they can do.

A TV show is hardly a controlled environment. Are these people really sick? Has their illness really disappeared? How improbable is it that this illness might have disappeared on itsown without divine intervention? Has he done anything that truly defies rational explanation, like having a lost limb regenerated?

And if this really does happen, why doesn’t he just work for a hospital, like the people who can actually demonstrably heal the sick, and do so without regard to the religious beliefs of the sufferer.

Actually, I’ve never heard of Benny Hinn, but just looking at his Wikipedia page, he sounds like the run-of-the-mill-bunco-artist-with-a-private-jet.

Sorry if I sound cynical, but I’m afraid “faith healers” really make my skin crawl.

How come a non-Catholic can work miracles?

 

[cerad]

How come a non-Catholic can work miracles?

I’m pretty sure he is a Catholic. It’s just that he would rather wear $10,000 dollar suits instead of robes and he doesn’t want to have to split his profits with the pope.

 

[reggieM]

Michigan stigmatist had the healing touch

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

God has revealed himself to a select few in recorded and oral history. Do miracles occur? Absolutely. This is doctrine.

In “testing” for miracles one come dangerously close to approaching a desire for the scientific proof of God.

If only people could get that into their heads ​

This will never happen. He that is above and beyond all that exists requires faith for salvation. Scientific “proof” reduces God to science and eliminates faith.

This why “Eucharistic miracles” are no such thing: they “prove” too much, & destroy Catholicism in the process.​

That miracles occur may “be doctrine” in some way - but this does not mean there is a common understanding of what miracle is; let alone that the concept has any stable meaning, if it means anything. Heart transplants would count as miraculous by some standards.

The mere miraculousness of a miracle tells us nothing of its moral character: which is more moral:

• a miracle killing all the first-born of a people while not hurting the firstborn of another nation
  or
• a non-miraculous, completely routine, medical procedure that heals the sick, wipes away tears from many eyes, gives fresh life to the dying, & gives hope to thousands, even millions, in the present & the future ?
  The first is no better than a conjuring-trick, and a malign one at that. There is nothing to stop the tsunami of 2004 being “credited” to “God”, except that the human race has progressed a bit in the last 3,000 years; so those who regard such events as Divine works are, in the main, seen as fanatics & not prophets: even by Christians who claim to accept the Bible as true.

He will come again and all will see and science will have no meaning.

 

[1holycatholic]

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/papalfrance08/pics/eucharist.jpg