The Congregation for the Causes of Saints (now part of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints) investigates and approves miracles used in the canonization (sainthood) process in the Catholic Church. These miracles are typically medically inexplicable healings attributed to the intercession of a candidate for sainthood.
Here are some notable examples of miracles approved by the Congregation:
🩺 1. Healing of Marie Simon-Pierre (Pope John Paul II’s cause)
Year: 2005
Condition: Advanced Parkinson’s disease
Miracle: After praying for Pope John Paul II’s intercession shortly after his death, her symptoms disappeared overnight. Neurological tests confirmed the disease had inexplicably vanished.
Significance: This healing was used for John Paul II’s beatification in 2011.
🩺 2. Healing of Floribeth Mora Diaz (John Paul II’s canonization)
Year: 2011
Condition: Inoperable brain aneurysm
Miracle: From Costa Rica, she prayed for John Paul II’s intercession on the day of his beatification. Her aneurysm disappeared without surgery.
Significance: Approved as the miracle for John Paul II’s canonization in 2014.
🩺 3. Healing of a newborn (Mother Teresa’s cause)
Case: A tribal woman in India gave birth to a child with multiple brain abnormalities.
Miracle: The child recovered suddenly after the family prayed to St. Teresa of Calcutta.
Significance: Used for her canonization in 2016.
🩺 4. Healing of a Brazilian man (Fulton Sheen’s cause)
Year: 2010
Condition: Stillborn baby, no heartbeat for 61 minutes
Miracle: After prayers for the intercession of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the baby revived suddenly without brain damage.
Significance: Approved miracle for Sheen’s beatification (though it has since been delayed).
🩺 5. Healing of a woman with tuberculosis (St. André Bessette)
Year: Early 20th century
Condition: Tuberculosis of the spine (Pott’s disease)
Miracle: The woman claimed to have been healed instantly after praying to Brother André and touching a relic.
Significance: One of the miracles used for his canonization in 2010.
How the Vatican verifies miracles:
Strict medical review by independent doctors
No natural explanation must be possible
Instant, complete, and lasting healing required
Must be linked specifically to prayer for the intercession of the candidate
Can an Omnipotent God create a rock he cannot lift? it is said that If one answers yes to the question, then God is therefore not omnipotent because he cannot lift the rock, but if one answers no to the question, God is no longer omnipotent because he cannot create the rock.my position is that he can do one or the other, at different times, but he can’t do both at the same time. and, that he can’t do both at the same time doesn’t disprove God as omnipotent.
to answer this, we need to ask another question. what happens when an immovable rock meets the unstoppable force of God?the issue– the paradox arises because it rests on two premises- that there exist such things as immovable rocks and unstoppable forces – which cannot both be true at once. If there exists an unstoppable force, it follows logically that there cannot be any such thing as an immovable rock, and vice versa.so the key then is “at once”. to ask if God can create both scenarios at once is a logical impossibility. God cannot do the logically impossible.if God creates the immovable rock, he cannot be an unstoppable force. and if God acts as the unstoppable force, he cannot create an immovable rock. he must choose which scenario exists at any given time. and, in fact, the fact that he would be able to choose the scenario, highlights the underlying omnipotence of God to begin with.to highlight the time element. if God made a rock that could not be lifted for a week, then for a week he could not lift it. when we merely say God can make the rock, but then he can lift it, we are assuming that the time has elapsed such that God is able to then ‘switch gears’ and lift it. when we add a time element such as “a week” it highlights that there are in fact restrictions if God makes that rock.we have to suppose that God knows what he’s doing when he makes decisions like that to prevent lifting it for a week. and, this is a matter of consistency…. it is like dropping a ball or not. i can say i won’t drop a ball, and if i am consistent as i would imagine God is, then i won’t drop the ball. if he creates the rock, whether or not he can lift it, he probably won’t lift it for as long as he says he won’t. not that he couldn’t.
i think at the end of the day you can say God can both make the rock and lift it, if your premise is right that God can be illogical. but that’s another debate. i’m assuming God must be logical.
it’s sort of like asking. “can the unlimited limit itself? if you answer yes, then it’s not truly unlimited, though if you answer no it’s still not unlimited”. i call that the ‘unlimited paradox’
penal substitution says that God needed an infinite method of having his wrath placated. the only method that is possible, the theory goes, is Jesus dying. his death means you don’t have to die as your sins are “covered”.
the problem with this idea is that it didn’t originate until a thousand years after Jesus and has little basis in the bible. during the early church, the language christians used is called “christus victor”. Jesus conquered sin and death on the cross, is the essence of the idea. i like to say love conquers death. anyone belonging to the brotherhood is also saved from death. so, penal substitution isn’t orthodox.
what about old testament sacrifices, were they to appease God’s wrath? nope. they were a means of saying “i dedicate what i have to you, and turn myself over to you”. here is a good quote that shows the true basis for old testament sacrifices and how it ties to Jesus’ sacrifice.
“In all of the sacrifices, the central theme is not appeasement, but representational consecration. That is, symbolically through the offering the worshiper says “this offering represents my giving to you my life”, or as you might hear in a love song “God I belong to you, here is my heart”. It is not a statement of placation (as if God needed to be bribed into loving us), but an act of devotion, entrusting oneself to God, giving your life into God’s hands. In the case of the thanksgiving and first fruits offerings it means that all that we have comes from God and so with these first fruits we acknowledge that it all belongs to God. The passover offering was about the birth of the people of Israel and marked the time of the exodus of God’s people out of bondage, so the passover offering was about committing and aligning oneself on God’s side against oppression. Finally along with all the other sacrifices the sacrifice of atonement for sin was saying “Here is my life, I want to live it for you Lord. I die to the sinful in me and give my life to you”.
In the same way blood was sprinkled to dedicate the temple, and dedicate the law to God. This was the case with the Passover sacrifice which originated as the people marked their house door showing their allegiance with God, consecrating their house as belonging to the Lord. Thus Jesus when he connects his death with the Passover speaks of a “Covenant” being established by his blood “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Lk22:20). It was the sealing of a promise, like signing a contract in blood. We can see here that whether a sin offering, or a thanks offering, or a dedication that in every case there is the common theme of consecration – dedicating to God. This sense of consecration is conveyed in the Latin root of the word “sacrifice” which means “to make sacred” or “to consecrate”. We give ourselves, our lives, our need, our thanks, our allegiance to God vicariously through the ritual of sacrifice.
There is here the aspect of identification with the animal – you bring a part of yourself to the altar, in many cases laying a hand on the animal’s head before it is slaughtered. Specifically in the case of the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement we can see also an aspect of transference as the scapegoat was sent off bearing the sin away (Lv 16:21-22). And as previously mentioned there is here a clear aspect of vicarious atonement specifically with the sin offerings – that animal that died was you. The consecration here meant that the sinner brought their broken life to the altar Yet in all of this the writers of the Old Testament are emphatic that the main object of sacrifice is not about a mechanical transaction detached from relationship, but the outward ritual effecting inner change, devotion, and repentance. As David says
“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean wash me, and I will be whiter than snow…Create in me a pure heart, O God…” (Ps 51:7,10)
David’s prayer here is that the outward cleansing of the hyssop would go down and cleanse his inmost being. God, David says, is not interested in outward actions, but in the state of his heart. This is a relational exchange not a legal one.
“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it. You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps 51:16-17).”
dr. jeffrey long wrong a book, ‘evidence of of the afterlife’. a smart and capable doctor writing a book like that should be sufficient to establish evidence, but i know some peeps are too stubborn to leave it at that.
let’s look at some lines of evidence:
philosophically, it’s just plain stupid to argue that it’s common for people to hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories when they die. why would this even happen? drugs, dreams, and other hallucations dont cause people to hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories in any other aspect of life… why should we assume there’s something special about dying that causes this?
out of body experiences are commonly verified as accurate, to the point of almost always being accurate. doctors and professionals are often some people verifying things that occurred when someone was dead, when what the dead person knew was impossible to know. if ya’ll want a start in researching out of body experiences, ‘evidence for the afterlife’ by doctor jeffrey long does a short literature review of some highlights. there’s lots of studies that look at the accuracy of those experiences and they’re always shown to be accurate. there’s whole scientific journals out there dedicated to this stuff, the evidence is basically too overwhelming to just ignore. even the AWARE study where they tried to measure out of body phenomenon, had two examples where someone who was dead knew what happened out of their body. and there was some measurement of auditory ability when they were dead. now, yes this isn’t the level of evidence that leaves no room for doubt, and this isn’t exactly being able to be measured in a lab on demand…. but this is all evidence that is being measured and can be repeated. it’s basic science.
dead family members. when people experience beings on the other side, the beings met are almost always dead and almost always family members. if this was just a random hallucination, there should be many more examples of living people and people other than family members. this consistency is a strong point.
there are plenty of examples of blind people seeing when they die, often for the first time ever. the examples who people who are coming to grips with a new sense, it takes time to process and that’s exactly what we see.
-another good piece of evidence is that when experiencers are surveyed, they say their ‘life reviews’ are always accurate, 100% of the time. if this was just a brain going hay wire, we’d expect lots of false memories.
-i think this also goes along with the idea that if this was a brain going hay wire, people would experience lots of random images, like a hallucination or dream. instead, they see lucid clear after life experiences that they have no doubt about and that are more real to them than their earthly lives.
-also, people often see images in their life review, that they’ve long forgotten. it’s not as likely just a brain going hay wire if it’s showing the whole life even the forgotten stuff.
-it’s also good evidence that the same sorts of NDEs happen to people who have never heard of these experiences, and to children who are too young to know about it either.
-it’s also good evidence, that across all cultures, the themes in the experiences happen the same. that is, tunnels, light being, life reviews and such… all these things happen at the same rate regardless of country or culture. i realize humans are similar, so the argument that we just have similar experiences is possible. but if this just a brain going hay wire, it wouldn’t be so consistent and would be a lot more like random images or random experiences.
more on consistency.
-almost every person who has these experiences after the exerperience then believes in the afterlife. if these were just hallucaionations, you’d expect this not to so consistent.
-it’s also worth noting, that a majority of atheists even come back believing in God… it’s almost never the case that theists end up becoming atheists. the atheists who dont convert, just had no special insight on the matter, the ones who gain knowledge of something end up becoming believers. (this is also a line of evidence for the existence of God)
-it’s very rare to find a non christian religion NDEs by the way. the experiences are so rare, that i challenge anyone to find just a few of them. the only ones i’ve seen are too open to interpretation to draw too many conclusions from.
the skeptic arguments against NDEs being authentic are at best hunches, it lacks specificity in science. there’s no known afterlife gene or something in our brain that we know of that would cause this. yes, we are all similar so maybe our survial gene is facilitating all this. but like i said, it’s all just a big hunch. we have lots of science and scant evidence to support skeptics. there’s simply not enough evidence to be a skeptic about whether there is even evidence to begin with. this is all evidence, so skeptics have a repubuttable presumption against them and they are bad and providing actual evidence to support their claims.
philosophically, if it’s common for people to experience elaborate afterlife stories when they die, that’s prime facie evidence that an afterlife might exist. even if i were to admit that an afterlife isn’t most probable… it’s objectively possible based on that evidence and all the other lines i’ve provided. that’s why it’s objectively irrational to say there’s not even evidence for an afterlife.
protestants like to say they are saved, end of discussion. catholics say you have to work out your eventual salvation… but if you look closer, they are willing to say salvation is both an event and a process. i dont think it’s very standard for a protestant to say salvation can be a process?
i think the way to look at this is simply by looking at the question of ‘being forgiven’. when we pray the our father, we ask as christians to be forgiven. we dont say ‘thank you for forgiving me’. it’s a very basic idea of repentance that’s foundational… for that foundation to be off would be a wild accusation.
it’s also worth noting, that the bible often talks about falling away and such. like the parable of the seeds and how jesus said some start to grow only to later wilt due to worldly concern. only some seeds grow to maturity.
it’s also worth tying the ‘assurance of salvation’ and ‘once saved always saved’ ideas to the idea of salvation.
-the bible says you can know you are saved, but given all the other examples where it says you can fall away, i would say that knowing one is saved is a special gift for a special person. jesus did say ‘not everyone who says to me lord lord will inherit the kingdom, but only those who do the will of the father’. it’s a lot to read into this that you can’t know you are saved, but we have to at least remember that acknowleding jesus as lord is not enough. i think we can all agree that just thinking you are saved isn’t enough? it does get into murky territory but there’s always a hypothetical mass murderer who is pathologically propensed to think he is saved.
-also, i think free will is such that a person can always loose their salvation for practical purposes, but for practical purposes some people can know they are saved, and always will be saved, practically.
to tie into this near death experience philosophy, a person can be loved unconditionally, and in that sense they are always saved, but a person still must face the consequences of their actions. like a mother unconditionally loves her children, she also must let them face their own consequences and actions. it’s like near death philosophy says, we go to where our vibration permits. if we have a low vibration, out soul can be saved by becoming a genuine christian. that’s all that’s necessary. because you will grow into higher vibrations and god has your back. if your words are empty, you wont grow into higher vibrarations. there’s a question about whether hell is eternal given near death philosphy, and most of those guys like to say hell is a prison. i think we can all agree that an eternal hell is possible given our free will, but we have to wonder the open question of if hell is eternal for practical purposes. it very well could be, or maybe not. it is central that hell does exist though. only one percent of NDEs are hellish, and they usually just consider that it was a learning experience. a wake up call.
it’s interesting that ‘once saved always saved’, ties into salvation like that. just like how it’s intersesting that ‘atonement’ ties into the ‘justification’ and salvation ideas. and lately i’ve been incorporating NDE philsophy as well.
one of the foundational aspects of forgiveness is repentence. or that someone ask for it to receive it. some traditional christians like some catholics say it’s not necessary to forgive everyone, or those who are unrepentent, cause God doesn’t either. if we look at the eastern concept of forgiveness, it also implies reconciliation. you can only forgive those you are reconciled with. it’s about establishing communion, and we can’t commune with someone closed off to us.
but Jesus does say ‘the measure you use will be measured to you’. which might indicate that the standard we use to forgive might be the standard God uses with us. at the end of John, he says ‘whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained’. catholics like to say this creates the idea of their confession, but protestants like to say this just means we have the power to save people through our preaching. neither of these ideas really fit that well, but both are compelling. we might say that if we dont forgive, they aren’t forgiven, their sin is retained. between the two of you. but we have to remember that our measure will be measured to us.
to incorporate NDE philsophy, everyone can acheive salvation. maybe of legal matters, we are all forgiven. but when it comes to the eastern concept of reconciliation, it is impossible to forgive someone we can’t commune with.
so, maybe in the sense that is most meaningful, we cant forgive if we can’t reconcile…. but we can always be open to reconcilation if they repent, or if it’s a matter of looking past brusised egos and letting bygones be bygones… or as saint paul said, ‘just let it slide’.
but when it comes to legality, but we can forgive but maybe it is up to each person how they want to treat that. but i would think if we use legality against others, it could be used against us. ultimately i think it’s wisest to forgive everyone, not just cause that’s what we want when we are unrepentant, but because it’s the godliest thing to do.
an atheist here made a good point… sometimes things look more like they are ‘consistent’ with God theory, rather than ‘evidence for’ God theory. any time you see evdience for God, ask if it would be better or at least possible to not call it evidence but merely consistent with God theory.
there’s lots of philosophic arguements for God. id group those with things like casuality arguments and design arguments. the thing about these is that there’s at least plausible arguments that can be made that are counter those. so it’s easy to just call these consistent with God and not evidence.
then you get into more science type arguments. the most straight forward way of looking at these, is that they are in fact evdience for God. things that look like supernatural healing. atheists usually become theists during NDEs. something impossible happening with healing it looks like, and we dont see that as far as we know coming from atheists, we dont see impossible looking healhings from atheists. and it’s almost never the case that theists become atheists during NDEs and NDEs are objectively evidence for the afterlife, so it’s at least realistic to say it’s also evidence for God.
with that said, if you have a dark heart and mind, an atheist could say there’s no evidence for God with these scientifc things. you could say we only have confirmation bias that healings that look supernatural happen, or that theists only assume those things only happen to theists and not atheists. they make a big assumpion that impossible looking things happen to atheists, but we’d have to admit it’s possible and just not reported. and, as far as NDEs, the conventional wisdom is that NDEs are subjective and influenced by the mind… so even if NDEs are objectively evidence for the afterlife, it’s also possible to say visions and thoughts of God are merely produced by our psychology and not signs of an objective reality
with all this said, even if they could plausibly say there’s no evidence for the God, atheism still lacks common sense.
-i think there’s too much emphasis in NDE research on saying their experiences are based on psychology… it looks more like objective things happen, and any deviations are misinterprataions. for example, christian NDEs are common, but hindu NDEs are just the experiencers interpretation… at least there’s not enough deviant types of NDEs to say it’s all psychology based.
-when healings that look supernatural happen, it still looks like impossible things are occurring. you can try to rationalize it, but that’s what it looks like.
-to say humans are merely flesh robots is riduculous. it’s obvious we are more than robots.
-there’s no explanation that we know of that can explain how life started on earth, or how something as complicated as human consciousness occurrs. there’s theories, yes, but they are weak from atheists on the common sense level.
-even if there are counter arguents for the philosophic arguments for God, they are at least formidable and strong, and help explain the God theory, at least if the God theory is in fact true. eg, causality or the argument from design
on one of the most fundamental levels, the old testament teaches an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. the new testament teaches turn the other cheek. how can such a fundamental difference be something that a christian must accept both as infallible truth? does truth change? how?
but it’s more than that core theological difference. the old testament has God killing people over and over again, or commanding them to die. see the story of noah where he killed the whole earth, or the time he turned a woman to stone for questioning where she was headed and looking back to her old lifei understand that it’s plausible that the consequences of sin is death, which even the bible says and is as true a statement as they come. but it seems to again be in stark contrast to the God of the new testament. what’s with this bipolar God of the new testament and the hippie God of the new testament? i realize even Jesus pointed out that the commandment and consequence of disrespecting ones parents is death, but how can such a difference be fundamentally compatible with each other? (i often wonder if jesus was being literal that that’s the way the world is, or if he was saying ‘even by this standard, the pharisees weren’t being consistent with mercy’)
but it’s more than these broader frictions. the old testament says unclean food is ungodly, yet the new testament says nothing God has made clean is unclean. how should we accept that Jesus’ death change something unclean to something clean? or the old testament says men with deformed penis’ can’t enter into the assembly of the lord, which sounds like they can’t enter heaven. how did jesus’ death make deformed penis’ acceptable? and the context doesn’t indicate this old testament verse was against self mutilation, but that any deformed penis was too much, even from a disability or injury. the best i can surmise, if these old testament verses are true… is that these are ceremonial laws, and ceremonial laws can change with a covenant change, assuming the covenant change was legit to begin with. it’s kinda like how often cultural differences are legit changes in the bible, (why it says women can’t lead or wear hats in church, even in the new testament, but everyone now accept as just cultural norms being changed) and not infallible differences being changed arbitrarily. ceremony and culture are both legit and reasonable ways of differentiating, but the theology for why the rules were the way they were to begin with, or how they can change, can still seem arbitrary and capricious, to use legal jargon.
we also have things that dont make sense theologically.
-the bible looks literal of the story of noah in the old testament, and the new testament treats the story literal too. i dont have time to list all the scientific discrepancies of that story, such as how there’s a constant lineage of cultures everywhere and constant archeological evidence of no flood everywhere, yet supposedly God destroyed it all… and hid or changed the evidence? to me, when God performs a miracle like he does with phsyical healings even in this day and age, he supports the miracle with evidence and truth. (such as the congregation of the causes of the saints with the catholic church) the story of noah isn’t supported by evidence, but contradicts it. maybe it wasn’t meant to be taken literally or was a local event?
i use two unconventional proofs for god. one is healing miracles, i dont see the kinds of miracles that happen to theists happen to atheists, or even non christians honestly, despite looking for that evidence and asking around. i realize that just because we dont see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, but this is still significant.
the other one is that the large majority of atheists come back believing in God after NDEs. it’s irrational to say there’s no evidence for the afterlife, when you get into the science of NDEs, and the credibility of NDEs lend credbility to all the atheists that convert. it’s also been objectively studied that christian NDEs happen at a much greater rate than non christian themed NDEs… such that jesus is a common component of these experiences. nonchristian themes are very rare, and hard to quantify or qualify, and open to interpretation, and might be unreliable.
there’s all the philosophical arguments for God, such as the design argument and the causality argument. these are best kept at the level of philosophy but dont get much beyond just corroborating the God theory.
in fact, all these points could be said to be just consistent with God, and if you wanted to split hairs, not evidence. a skeptic on this site made that point once, is this more about evidence or just ‘consistent with the God theory but not evidence’. but with the miracle and NDE point, it’s majorly lacking in common sense to stay atheist.
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some other points. there are credible medical doctors who are exorcists who say they have seen supernatural phenomenon. there are credible doctors who study young children who remember past lives, and say that the children couldn’t know the details they explain. i think there are professors out of the university of virginia for example who study this.
I think that instead of us having a legal relationship with God to appease God’s wrath, we have a parent child relationship to magnify God’s love. The relationship is like the prodigal son.
The bible does say that Jesus dying prevented God’s wrath, but the distinction is that that don’t imply appeasing God’s wrath.
The bible said Jesus nailed any legal requirements to the cross. Literally, instead of saying we have a legal relationship with God then like is said in western Christianity, we no longer have a legal relationship with him.
There r verses that say Jesus became sin for us, and by his wounds we r healed. But these just mean that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice. Love wouldn’t let Jesus die, Jesus conquered sin and death with his sacrifice. He could have engaged in the Christian doctrine of self defense, but he chose to offer himself instead. The Bible says the spirit that rose Jesus from the dead lives in us and will raise us from the dead. We are adopted children of God and brothers of Jesus when we believe in Jesus and try to do his will.
This is basically, christus Victor atonement instead of penal substitution. Christie Victor was the predominate view in the early church, the other was minority view. Penal substitution is also based in paganism, a blood sacrifice on a technicality, instead of a sacrifice of first fruit, an offering of ones gifts in sacrifice. The bible says god takes no pleasure in burnt offerings but prefers gifts of the heart. Of course, they usually talked in terms of ransom, I think, so me saying love conquers death as central might be heretical or not pure doctrine. My love conquers death ideas are present in all forms of atoenment historically, just not the critical part of the theories. it should be the critical part.
The Law of Love 