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Thursday, September 05, 2024

What about Roman Catholic miracles?

One of the first points to make is that this isn't a one-way street. Just as there are Catholic miracles that need to be addressed by Protestants, there are non-Catholic miracles that need to be addressed by Catholics. And they'll have to appeal to the same kinds of explanations Protestants appeal to, even though Protestants are often accused of acting like atheists and such when they do so. I want to provide some examples of non-Catholic miracles that Catholics need to explain, then outline some of the explanatory options.

Craig Keener's two-volume series on miracles discusses many Catholic miracles, but also some Protestant ones. See my series of posts on Keener's work here.

I've discussed the Zeitoun Marian apparition in some other posts. There's a lot of evidence for it, but it's affiliated with Copts, not Roman Catholicism.

Here's Stanley Krippner, a paranormal researcher, discussing stigmata and other allegedly paranormal activity occurring with a non-Christian he studied, and he mentions in the process that such activity has occurred among Protestants as well. The man Krippner studied said he was "raised in the Muslim faith but now finds inspiration in all religions." (page 210 here) However, there's a reference elsewhere to how he said "I am Muslim" (214). The article refers to stigmata occurring with this individual at the mention of Jesus in a conversation, and there's discussion of some eucharistic phenomena (211-12, 216). The article also refers to another non-Catholic who experienced stigmata phenomena or something similar, a man referred to as "Not a Roman Catholic, and not particularly religious" (208). Krippner cites another source who noted that "the battle wounds of Mohammed have appeared on devout Islamic men" (218). And see page 221 for other examples of such phenomena among non-Catholics.

Many non-Catholics report apparitions. My mother, who's a Protestant, experienced an apparition of my father about a year after his death, accompanied by other, confirming evidence. I've written about that incident and other such experiences I and my relatives have had in other posts. See here and here, for example.

A lot more could be cited, but I'll stop there. Moving on to explanatory options, I'll just give several examples without trying to be exhaustive:

- Normal causes. It could be fraud of some type. It could be some kind of honest mistake (an optical illusion, a hallucination, etc.).

- Demonic activity.

- Human paranormal abilities. The human source could be living or deceased. There could be one individual involved or a group.

- An impersonal source. A place memory or stone tape phenomenon. If an event resembles a replay of a past event - because it keeps recurring, because of how unresponsive it is to its environment, or whatever - that may be what it is. The replay could be visual, audible, or whatever else. It could be fragmentary, such as only seeing the legs of an individual rather than the whole body. Michael Medved has occasionally discussed an experience he had in which he witnessed something that seemed like a replay of a Civil War battle. From what I've heard him say about it, I suspect it involved some variation of a stone tape phenomenon. We shouldn't assume that a paranormal event has to have some kind of personal source who's immediately causing it. This impersonal category is important to keep in mind. It seems like the best explanation of some paranormal events.

- God's common grace. See here for a discussion of the topic and some Biblical examples. In principle, a Protestant should have no objection to the possibility of an apparition of Mary (or Samuel, Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, etc.) or the miraculous healing of a Catholic, like the healing of Naaman in 2 Kings 5 or the miracles in Cornelius' life before his conversion in Acts 10. One or more of the details in a particular context may make an appeal to common grace inappropriate, but, generally speaking, it's a valid explanatory option that should be considered.

- A hybrid scenario. A miracle or series of miracles could come from a combination of two or more sources like the ones above. For further discussion of this sort of explanation, see here.

We've written a lot about non-Christian and non-Protestant miracles elsewhere, like here and here. Or see the collection of posts here.

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