The Catholic Church - Double Standard of Miracles

MIRACLE DOUBLE STANDARD

 

The Roman Catholic Church says we are not under obligation to believe in any apparition or miracle even when they are approved by the Church that has taken place since Bible times. We are obliged to believe in the miracles reported in the Bible for it is the word of God and doesn’t err. This is a dishonest double-standard. You can’t believe without evidence, if you try all you do is assume or guess which is not believing. If we believe that the Bible is true we must find evidence that its miracle stories are true. But if we may reject the non-biblical miracles then that is saying the evidence doesn’t matter. If evidence for miracles doesn’t matter then the evidence for the Bible doesn’t matter either. This is so simple and obvious that if we accuse the Church of stupidity or deliberate distortion one thing is for sure, it cannot be trusted and it is the body that takes the authority to declare miracles false or true. Would a God of truth really do miracles for a religion like that?

 

The Church says that you may deny or doubt her optional miracles as long as you have a logical reason to (xvii, Raised from the Dead) but you must never attack the Bible ones for revelation ceased with the apostles (page 142, Catholicism and Fundamentalism). To oppose the optionals without good logical reason would be to slander the commission that concludes that they happened by calling it stupid or dishonest. It is our duty to believe what the evidence presents. But she commands us to believe in the resurrection even though she says that we should reject it if the evidence is not good enough but if we want to stay Catholic we have to believe in the resurrection. She arbitrarily commands us to believe this and tells us that we can believe that if we wish. The Church is sneakily making a difference where there is none. Both the optional and compulsory miracles can’t be different if evidence for them is all that counts. So, Mary appearing at Fatima is just as binding on us and as convincing as the resurrection if both are real well-vindicated miracles of God. But they are not and there are millions of problems with them so they are not of divine origin.

 

Theologians might say that Catholics are obliged to believe the Bible miracles and the others are optional because the former can be proved better to be real and from God. This is untrue. We have only one or a few reports and just one testament for most of the Bible ones. But at Fatima, where Mary supposedly appeared in 1917 we have more. We have thousands who said they saw the sun spin. What sense does it make to say that the resurrection of Jesus which was only known through visions (empty tombs prove nothing) and visions of Mary are not equal in value? The evidence for the Bible wonders is appalling for no cross-examination or medical evaluation of the witnesses is possible or was ever performed. And even if the gospels were written one year after the crucifixion they would not prove the resurrection for it is still more likely that a mistake was made by some writer that the gospeller’s sources all sprang from than that a resurrection really happened. We don’t know the circumstances but they could have been right for such a mistake to take off. With miracles even what seems to be an excuse for not believing the account is not an excuse for the standard has to be as strict as possible.

 

Reason says that if a miracle, say a cure at Lourdes or an apparition, cannot be rationally and scientifically explained except in terms of a miracle then it follows that something checked with modern science and which is near our day has more right to be believed than things reported in a book thousands of years ago. And a miracle that is happening today has more weight that Lourdes or Fatima or anything that took place before our greater and improved scientific knowledge and progress.

 

We read in the Bible (1 Kings 17) that during a famine the prophet Elijah stayed with a widow and her son. They shared the last of their food with him a little meal and some oil. In return for this the jar with the meal miraculously never ran out and neither did the oil. Amateur magicians can do better today. A starving widow and son were in no position to be good at making sure that they weren’t being tricked. No investigation was undertaken. The Jews just took it for granted that the miracle was true. No God would do such a ridiculous miracle. But the point of the whole story is that investigation cannot be lawful. The Bible itself encourages gullibility in the face of reported miracles. Catholics are sinning by investigating miracles.

 

We can’t interview the apostles or do forensic tests on the empty tomb of Jesus. We have only one testimony in the Bible or anywhere that Moses divided the waters of the Red Sea and if you believe everything you hear from one person you will be a joke.

 

Catholicism’s miracles supposedly indicate that it is the true and right Church and to be obeyed but by merely happening they say something totally contrary to that. Rome says Catholics are not bound to believe anything that is not in the Bible or in what is not implied by it so if that is wrong then Catholicism is just another man-made cult for it is error-ridden. The miracles are not attributable to God or to a supernatural being with integrity. If God is the source of miracles and is so bizarre then why can’t it be that miracles are the signs of something just as or more bizarre? The Devil would not do them for he could do better and start a Church that allows some forms of sin and says they are the keys to salvation if he wants people in Hell. It is most probable that miracles are clever hoaxes and are verified through misperception and mistakes and/or deception. God and the Devil see into hearts and know more than we ever could. Satan then could do a miracle that converts sinners to God and is an exact mimic of what God would do but which is intended to cause as much sin or harm as possible indirectly. For example, miracles make unbelievers blaspheme. Satan hates God so much that he would do a miracle just so that one tiny extra sin would happen that would not otherwise have taken place.

 

Despite Catholic doctrine, apparitions and miracles which dish out threats of divine chastisement and plagues and wars that will come if the message is not heeded, must necessarily be accepted as equal to scripture. They would actually be superior to scripture because they are more relevant to today and it makes sense to listen to today's convincing miracles than yesterday's.

 

Prophetic visions lead to supporters urging that scripture will have to be seen through the eyes of the apparition and its attitudes. Scripture cannot speak on its own for it has to be interpreted in accordance with the visions so the visions have the real say. Even if apparitions are inferior to scripture there is a sense in which they are superior for once they are accepted they colour the way the scriptures are interpreted.

 

The main point I want to make is simply this: to predict earthquakes and other disasters as coming chastisements of God is extremely serious business. You need exceptionally good evidence before you can say that. The utterances of the apparitions would need the right to be considered scripture before they could tell us such things. When an apparition says things like that it is claiming underhandedly to be issuing inspired scripture. The Catholic must deny the divine source of the nasty threats in apparitions which is the same as saying that no apparition can be trusted for most of them make terrifying prophecies. It would mean that since some deceiving supernatural power exists no apparition however orthodox can be trusted in. Perhaps the Catholic must deny the sufficiency of the revelations given once and for all through Jesus Christ which means that the faith is left wide open to new innovations and revelations that could swamp and smother the gospel and lead to millions of sects.

 

The Catholic Church puts testimonies before physical miracles that we can test for ourselves like communion wafers turning into visible human flesh, holy people living without food and drink, saints not decaying and stigmata and vanishing tumours that were there yesterday and gone today. For example, the Church approves the Lourdes visions on the word of Bernadette but has not given official permission to believe the vast majority of the equally or better “proven” physical evidences for miracles. It is illogical to put testimony before physical evidence. The Church is too biased and dishonest to be trusted.

 

Nobody can say such miracles are given to support the claims of the Church for that is not what they do when thought about correctly.

 

It is wiser to believe a miracle that can be tested scientifically. If God does some of these they should all be like that and when they are not we can be positive that they have nothing to do with him. So, if both the testable and the testimonial miracles happen then miracles have no message except that science is nonsense. Miracles are evil and when they happen in the Catholic Church they evilly back up the double-standard regarding miracles that the Church has set up.

 

When a miracle or apparition insinuates that Catholic doctrine is wrong the Church rejects it immediately and does not even bother investigating scientifically or otherwise. When that is done the Church has no right to claim that only miracles that indicate the veracity of the Church’s doctrine happen. When that is done the Church has no right to say it is honest, open and objective when it comes to miracle reports. The lies suggest that miracle reports are used by the Church in order to unduly exercise an influence on people.

 

Catholics have three options if they want to make sense of the ecclesiastical miracles. 1, deny the miracles that are not biblical; 2, make them superior to the Bible; 3, declare them proven but deny they are from God. The first fits Catholic doctrine for it denies that miracles happen today which is what some Catholics especially progressive ones believe. Plus nobody is bound to believe the non-biblical miracle accounts or in Lourdes or Fatima. The second denies that Catholicism is the true Church and makes visionaries have more authority than the pope. But if Catholicism is a false Church then how could visions that back it up be from an honest God? The third means that the evidence for Jesus is weaker than the evidence against him. It says miracles were his credentials and since the Devil always does miracles that seem kindly there is no way of being sure which are his or which are God’s. But Jesus’ would be probably satanic in origin because if the ecclesiastical miracles cannot be shown to be God’s work how could any miracles, even Jesus’, be an exception? Jesus said his miracles were his credentials so Jesus then would be guilty of using fake evidence that he was sent by God and full of God’s power to do miracles.

 

The Catholic Church says that the Bible cannot be added to or that the canon is closed until Jesus comes back to inaugurate the reign of God on the earth and the last judgment. But it should be adding the statements of its apparitions to the Bible if it wants to believe in apparitions.

 To make the extra-biblical miracles optional is the same thing as saying that they are not needed at all. When God does unnecessary miracles that shows that God is showing off or he is fixing his blunders. The believer can admit neither. A God who does either of these is not fit to be God. The Catholic miracles philosophically imply that God does not exist! Incredible but true!

 

The Church today warns that most modern apparitions and miracles promote a God who is harsh and frightening and who is threatening punishments. It condemns such apparitions. Curiously, you can be excommunicated for denying that the Virgin Mary was conceived without sin but you will not be excommunicated for supporting an apparition that teaches an off-putting view of God! So questioning a dogma about Mary is a bigger sin than insulting God! It is obvious that the Church is more worried about its authority to make dogmas and order people to believe than in God. Any apparition that supports a Church like that is fit only for condemnation.

 

The Church rejects absurd miracles. If a statue of the Virgin Mary was reported even by reliable sources to have come to life and sang John Brown’s Body the Church would disbelieve in the miracle. A miracle that is not absurd but which purports to verify and promote nonsensical doctrine then is also to be dismissed. And Catholic doctrine is far from sensible.