Lourdes calls a healing “remarkable,” avoiding the term “miracle”
The Roman Catholic shrine at Lourdes has announced the “remarkable healing” of a French invalid, avoiding the traditional term “miracle” because its doctors increasingly shy away from calling an illness or condition incurable. The case of Serge François, 56, whose left leg was mostly paralysed for years, was the first healing announced since the Church eased some rules in 2006 for declaring that a person was healed thanks to visiting the site.
The Catholic Church teaches that God sometimes performs miracles, including cures that doctors can’t explain. Sceptics reject this as unscientific and explain sudden recoveries as psychological phenomena or the delayed result of treatment.
Here’s the announcement on the official site in French, with information about Serge François. Click on “English” at the upper right for the translation (not available at the time of this posting).
“In the name of the Church, I publicly recognise the ‘remarkable’ character of the healing from which Serge François benefited at Lourdes on April 12, 2002,” said Bishop Emmanuel Delmas of Angers in western France, where François lives.
Delmas, who earned a medical degree before entering the priesthood, said the bureau of medical experts at Lourdes had concluded the recovery was “sudden, complete, unrelated to any particular therapy and durable.”
“Doctors today hesitate to use the adjective ‘inexplicable,’ or at least qualify it by adding ‘according to the current state of scientific knowledge’,” Lourdes Bishop Jacques Perrier said in a statement to explain the new wording. “They consider this reserve indispensible so they are not disqualified by their colleagues who refuse to consider things may be inexplicable.”
French nun says Pope John Paul gave her ‘second birth’
The French Catholic nun who credits the late Pope John Paul with curing her of Parkinson’s disease said on Monday her sudden recovery came just as she was about to quit working because of her ailment.
Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, 49, said she woke up in June 2005, two months after the Polish-born pope had died, suddenly cured of the disease she had suffered from for four years.
“When I woke up, I felt I was not the same,” Sister Marie told a news conference at the bishop’s office in this southern French city. “There was no more heaviness in my muscles, I could move normally. For me it was a new birth, a second birth.”
Her superior said the nun had told her the previous evening that she could no longer work in their order’s maternity clinic because of her worsening health. “I asked her to take a pencil and write John Paul’s name,” Mother Marie Thomas told journalists. “I saw the writing was very messy and illegible. I said to myself there was nothing left to do but hope.”
John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict, approved a decree last Friday declaring her healing a miracle and attributing it to the late pontiff, clearing the way for him to be beatified on May 1.
Read the full story here by Jean-François Rosnoblet or his original report in French Soeur Marie Simon-Pierre raconte sa “seconde naissance.”
Filipinos back contraception bill despite Catholic Church-poll
Seven in 10 Filipinos support a reproductive health bill permitting education on contraception which would also help check population growth, despite opposition from the powerful Roman Catholic Church, a survey showed on Tuesday.
The Church, a major social and political force in the poor Southeast Asian nation of about 95 million, has blocked similar bills since the 1990s and earlier this year denounced President Benigno Aquino’s support for contraception.
The bill is in the early stages of consideration by Congress, and proponents are confident it can be enacted into law given it has the backing of Aquino, who says slowing population growth will help fight poverty.
Father Melvin Castro of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines said the bill was “an attack to the sanctity of life and indirectly promotes abortion”. The Church backs “natural” contraception while opposing “artificial” methods, including condoms, pills and other means. Ana Maria Tabunda of Pulse Asia, the group which conducted the survey, told Reuters the Church’s attack on Aquino over education had raised awareness of and support for the bill.
Read the full story by Manny Mogato here.
Pope Benedict praised Philippine bishops for opposing the bill during their once-every-five-years ad limina visit to the Vatican on Monday: “I commend the Church in the Philippines for seeking to play its part in support of human life from conception until natural death, and in defence of the integrity of marriage and the family. In these areas you are promoting truths about the human person and about society.”
Vatican broadens case for condoms to fight AIDS
Pope Benedict’s landmark acknowledgement that the use of condoms is sometimes morally justifiable to stop AIDS is valid not only for gay male prostitutes but for heterosexuals and transsexuals too, the Vatican said Tuesday.
The clarification, which some moral theologians called “groundbreaking,” was the latest step in what is already seen as a significant shift in Catholic Church policy.
It came at a news conference to launch the pope’s new book, “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times.”
In the book, a long interview with German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald, the pope made clear he was not changing the Catholic ban on contraception, but, using the example of a male prostitute, said there were cases where using a condom to avoid transmitting the HIV virus could be justified.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi made the clarification because the German, English and French versions of the book used the male article when referring to a prostitute, but the Italian version used the female form.
“I asked the pope personally if there was a serious distinction in the choice of male instead of female and he said ‘No’,” Lombardi said.
“The point is it (condom use) should be a first step towards responsibility in being aware of the risk of the life of the other person one has relations with,” he said.
Pope words on condoms bolster AIDS fight in Africa
Pope Benedict’s qualified backing of condom use to help prevent AIDS marks a small breakthrough for efforts to fight the scourge in Africa, giving health workers and clergy more scope to broach a still-taboo subject.
News of the pontiff’s comments in a book came days before a U.N. report on Tuesday showed that even Africa was making inroads into the epidemic, with a fall in infection rates over the past decade coinciding with greater availability of condoms.
“It does open the opportunity for discussion,” Paul De Lay, Deputy Executive Director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said of the pope’s statement, citing past confusion among many African Catholics over the Church’s approach to AIDS.
“These comments are positive in the sense that they correct the message he gave last year. Now we need to really spread the word right into the villages,” said Eugide Bashombana, HIV Officer for aid group Oxfam in Democratic Republic of Congo where Catholics make up around half the population and which has an estimated HIV infection rate of 4.3 percent.
Among the large Catholic minority in Kenya, where infection rates peaked at around 10 percent in the 1990s, the pope’s comments were welcomed by many followers. “As the world is changing and things are also changing every day, I think the use of condoms is a right thing at the moment for the young generation,” businessman Alfred Nalango told Reuters outside the Holy Family Basilica church in Nairobi.
De Lay believed the relaxation of the official line could encourage priests who for years have tacitly approved condom use, for example to protect a women during sex with her HIV-positive husband. “They will not preach condoms from the pulpits but they will not say anything against them,” he said. “It is not in spite of the pope. It is just a recognition that millions are dying.”
Overpopulation is the biggest cause of human suffering and environmental destruction worldwide. In fact every other major problem around the globe is either caused or exaggerated by the global population problem. So, if the catholic church was really serious about relieving human suffering they would promote family planning and help people have smaller families. The best thing anyone can do for the future of the children they do have is have fewer children. If everyone had smaller families (one, or two, three at the most) everyone would be better off. Pope Benedict, too little, way to late, all thinking people should leave the church NOW.
Pope says in new book he would resign if incapacitated
Pope Benedict says in a new book that he would not hesitate to become the first pontiff to resign willingly in more than 700 years if he felt himself no longer able, “physically, psychologically and spiritually,” to lead the Church.
With startling candor, the 83-year-old Benedict floats the possibility of something Catholic Church officials do not like to talk about because it could open a doctrinal can of worms.
The book, called “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times,” has so far made headlines for the pope’s cautious opening to the use of condoms to stop AIDS.
But the book, an interview with German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald, also contains many personal reflections on Benedict’s health, his daily routine and his future.
“Yes, if a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation, to resign,” he says.
The last pope to resign willingly was Celestine V in 1294 after reigning for only five months. Gregory XII reluctantly abdicated in 1415 to end a dispute with a rival claimant to the Holy See.
U.S. church-run hospitals provide higher quality care — Thomson Reuters study
Catholic and other church-owned systems are significantly more likely to provide higher quality performance and efficiency to the communities served than investor-owned systems, according to a Thomson Reuters analysis of the quality performance of 255 health systems in the United States.
Catholic health systems are also significantly more likely to provide higher quality performance to the communities served than secular not-for-profit health systems, it said. By contrast, investor-owned systems have significantly lower performance than all other groups.
“The findings of the study suggest a changing role for health system governance and leadership,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters. “Our data suggest that the leadership of health systems owned by churches may be the most active in aligning quality goals and monitoring achievement of mission across the system.”
To learn more about the 100 Top Hospitals program, including the 100 Top Hospitals: Health System Benchmarks research, visit 100tophospitals.com.
Feeble, choked River Jordan struggles for salvation
Christian pilgrims alarmed by claims that baptism in the River Jordan could make them sick are being urgently reassured by Israeli officials that the water poses no health risk.
Water quality tests published this week counter allegations by environmentalist group Friends of the Earth that the level of coliform bacteria from sewage in the river is too high for safe bathing, Eli Dror of Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority said.
“There’s absolutely no problem with the quality of the water. People can come and baptise here as much as they want,” Dror told Reuters. “I can guarantee it.”
Today’s Lower Jordan is an undeniably meagre and murky stream, cut off from its sweetwater source in the Sea of Galilee, sacrificed to the needs of towns and agribusiness in the desert valley and topped up with waste water and runoff.
“We’ve known for a long time that these waters are not healthy,” says Gidon Bromberg of Friends of the Earth. “For most of the year they are four times more polluted than Israeli standards would permit. People who baptise in these waters presently, if they have a cut in their skin, could quickly develop a rash. If they swallow any of the water they could develop a stomach upsets and start vomiting.”
“There’s absolutely no problem with the quality of the water. People can come and baptise here as much as they want,” Dror told Reuters. “I can guarantee it.” Such truth in those words!
Being religious may not make you healthier after all
A number of studies over the past two decades have shown that religious people tend to be healthier. But a new study suggests that when it comes to heart disease and clogged arteries, attending religious services or having spiritual experiences may not protect against heart attacks and strokes.
This study suggests “there’s not a lot of extra burden or extra protection afforded by this particular aspect of people’s lives,” said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, of the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, who led the study, published in the journal Circulation.
In their review of data from nearly 5,500 people who were part of another study, Lloyd-Jones and his colleagues — one of whom, Matthew Feinstein, is a Northwestern medical student who suggested the research — expected to see less risk for heart disease among those with more “religiosity.”
Neither the rate of heart disease events, nor the number of certain risk factors — such as high cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure — differed among those who were more or less religious or spiritual. The only exceptions: Those who went to religious services, otherwise prayed or meditated, or were highly spiritual were more likely to be obese, and less likely to smoke.
Read the whole post here.
Mauritanian Muslim imams initiate rare ban on female circumcision
Human rights campaigners who have been struggling for years to eliminate female genital mutilation (FGM) in West Africa got a boost this week as news emerged that a group of Muslim clerics and scholars in Mauritania had declared a fatwa, or religious decree, against the practice.
“Are there texts in the Koran that clearly require that thing? They do not exist,” asked the secretary general of the Forum of Islamic Thought in Mauritania, Cheikh Ould Zein. “On the contrary, Islam is clearly against any action that has negative effects on health. Now that doctors in Mauritania unanimously say that this practice threatens health, it is therefore clear that Islam is against it.”
In many parts of West Africa, FGM has been presented as a religious obligation for practising Muslim women, leading most to believe that if they are not circumcised they are unclean and their prayers will not be heard. Which makes the decision by 34 imams and scholars — supported by the government of Mauritania and UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency — all the more unusual.
Read the whole story on the Reuters humanitarian news network AlertNet.
Praise be to the Human Rights Campaigners, wonderful news.
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