Why doesn’t Pope walk on water or heal the sick?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Needy1
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
N

Needy1

Guest
If Pope is vicar of God and the successor of Peter?

Both Jesus and Peter did miracles according to New Testament, then why doesn’t Pope do miracles.
 
Maybe he does miracles, but they are not recognized. Opening people’s eyes and ears today to Jesus’ good news, the Gospel, may be a miracle as great as any performed by Peter.
 
  1. Miracles are not always made public, especially during a person’s lifetime. Popes may well be working many miracles that the world will never hear about.
  2. God permits miracles where He thinks they are needed for the increase of faith. This was very necessary in the early days of the Church. If God does not think a miracle will best serve to increase faith or there is some other way of going about it, he doesn’t permit the miracle to happen.
 
Last edited:
The Apostolic miracles ended with the death of the last apostle, as did the Apostolic age generally.
 
There are other miracles aside from acts of divinity. Bringing in people from the cold into the Church is in itself a miracle because it’s an act of saving lost souls who may have never had a relationship with God
 
St Paul tells us that the spirit gives us all sorts of different gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:4-12 … those ones you speak of in the title of this post are just two of them. Others are teaching, prophesising, knowledge, wisdom etc. It is not for us to say how God shows his powers or where his Spirit puts his gifts. Like the others have said we can’t always see them and also wont always know of them in this life time. The Pope may well be doing other things that we don’t know of and out of humility not telling all. Many good Christians do not rush about telling of all good deeds and in fact many miracles are not known about for this and other reasons. If you read the works of saints you’ll see that many of the so called common miracles and mystical experiences were only told when they were commanded to tell often by God and/or by their confessor and at great duress for them.
 
If a miracle somehow were attributed to the current Pope, no doubt a multitude of people would immediately go on to debunk the miracle as fake or caused by natural phenomena. For the unbeliever, no proof is enough.
 
The answer to your question has some answers that are degrees of speculation. But in the end this is a mystery.

How do you handle mysteries? There are lots of them, and we should come to terms with the fact that we can’t know everything with certainty.
What do you think?
 
Bishops are not saints. They can become but the position holds no power in itself in that respect. Why doesn’t God send one of His saints to be bishops anymore? That is another question.
 
It’s a good question. The answer, that the ability to perform miracles or “age or miracles” disappeared when the Apostles died is very similar to the answer given by some of us Jews that “prophecy died out” with the “age of the Prophets.”

There are no actual Scriptural proofs for such arguments, and the claim that prophecies and miracles are still happening but are occurring in secret don’t help provide empirical evidence and effective data to questions such as these. It’s just bad apologetics, and we Jews and Christians know it.

There are other answers, however. They aren’t popular, but they do provide an answer that might be a bit more realistic.

The first, which is the most difficult, is that the miracles in Scripture are less supernatural than narrated. It’s not that they are not true. It’s that they are not as historically accurate in their detail as presented. The idea behind the narrative is a religious lesson, not a news report.
 
To illustrate: in the miracle of Ten Plagues on Egypt, the Egyptians lose their livestock in the Fifth Plague according to Ex 9.1-7, but then they are alive again to receive boils during the 6th plague as state in Ex 9.8-12.

The Seventh Plague of Hail and Fire of Ex 9.13-35 would be simple enough, but the dead animals of Egypt are there again to suffer during that torment.

And finally, the Tenth Plague: the Death of the Firstborn (Ex 11-12) strikes not only the firstborn of humankind but of Egyptian beast! How many times do these animals have to die?

Alas, when the Hebrews have left Egypt and are at the Sea, Pharoah and his army come after them in chariots pulled by–guess what? Horses! (Read Ex 14.9) Now, where did he get all those horses so quickly after all those plagues killed all those animals so many times over?

Now is the Bible mistaken? I’m a Jew. Am I selling my faith short? No.

You see, Scripture is not a news report. It is not an encyclopedia. It teaches us religious truth, not historical fact. If often does this with an exciting narrative, parable, even folklore. We do this sometimes like when we tell the story of ‘The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere’ or of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree and then confessing to his father: “I cannot tell a lie.”

Guess what? Neither story is true. Paul Revere was captured and never warned the American colonists with lanterns or that famous cry: “The British are coming! The British are coming!” And we all know that “cherry tree” story of George Washington is just a fable. But these stories teach time-honored truths, which is why we keep teaching them to the next generation.

Jesus may or may not have walked on water. He may or may not have healed the sick. If you read the Gospel accounts, often the similar accounts of the same stories do not match. Why not? Because like the Exodus account of the Ten Plagues, the details don’t matter.
 
It matters not whether all the animals of the Egyptians died in the 5th, 6th, 10th or just in some of the plagues. It matters not if Paul Revere was the actual person who warned of the British invasion. The truth is that God redeemed the Hebrews from slavery. The truth is that the Americans won their liberty from the Crown. As the lore of George Washington as a boy who confesses to chopping down his father’s tree teaches, we love truth–the facts don’t matter that much.

The second possibility is one some faithful might find more plausible: not everybody gets to do miracles.

In the Jewish Scriptures, which make up the Old Testament of the Christians Bible, read through it and mark how many times miracles happen. Compared to how many times miracles happen in the New Testament and you will see that they barely happen at all. In fact, generations pass before people see a prophet or witness a miracle in Old Testament times.

In the New Testament times, even among the Apostles, it is still rare. Sometimes there are reports of miracles happening left and right, but other times they don’t.

Why can’t everyone produce the same miracles whenever and wherever they wish? The Apostle Paul explained:
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. To one is given through the Spirit the expression of wisdom…to another faith by the same Spirit; to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit; to another mighty deeds; to another prophecy…But one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.
Click to expand...
He goes on to explain that the Christian church is like one body with many parts, some have gifts to do miracles, others do not. Being a pope is no guarantee you receive a gift to walk on water. God can give such a miraculous ability to anyone God wishes.–1 Cor 12.4-31.

Of course, it may be a combination of something in between: the miracles reported have some historicity to them, but the historicity is not the importance. The truth of the matter is something beyond the “fact” of the miracle. Is it that animals died by hail and fire? Is the fact of that matter more important than the truth of what happened in those events? Is the walking on water as important as who it is who walked on water and what happened when someone lost their faith in him? Is the fact or the truth the narrative is teaching us more important?

There may be great historical truth, down to the last detail in the narrative, but if you see only that, what good has that done for you?
 
Why doesn’t the Pope walk on water? Because this is not a side show in a circus. Nor is this a magician at work.

Why doesn’t he heal the sick?

How do you know the sick are not healed - because no one told you?

And if the sick are healed, they are healed through the Pope, not by the Pope; it would be God who heals. Could God act through the Pope to heal? Certainly. And God may well choose to do that; but you may never hear of it. That does not mean it did not occur.

You might want to read John 20:29.
 
I believe when I was a child, people spoke to me as a child. Now that I’m an adult people don’t talk to me about Santa Clause or unicorns.

In the same way, when God chose to reveal Himself to a people who couldn’t read He used other methods to impart truth. The truth that this particular man was the God-man spoken of in Genesis, the Psalms, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, etc…

Our facilities of logic, reasoning, & understanding are far greater than those of 1st century humanity. Properly used, I believe we’d see miracles all the time… every where.

Our God is a miracle worker. Not was, is
 
Last edited:
Tis_Bearself said:
If God does not think a miracle will best serve to increase faith or there is some other way of going about it, he doesn’t permit the miracle to happen.
Click to expand...
How in the world could you possibly have this knowledge?
 
Are you asking how I myself could have this knowledge, or how God could have this knowledge?
Not clear from your comment.

If you’re asking about how I myself could have the knowledge of God’s methods, Church teaching is that a miracle is a call to faith, from God. Obviously God will pick the time, place and manner in which he calls people to faith. It might be a miracle or it might be just sending the Holy Spirit to inspire a person, or any number of other ways. Many people on this forum felt called to the faith in some way but it wasn’t by what we commonly define as a “miracle” - no angel appeared and nobody was suddenly cured of cancer, that sort of thing.

 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top