I hear that the Catholic Church still requires two miracles to be named a saint by canonization.  Give me a break!  Haven't you heard of science?  Miracles are just medieval superstition.  Welcome to the twenty first century.

Sincerely,

Horace Misnagdim

Au contraire!  The twentieth century was the great century of martyrs and miracles.

Pope Leo XIII had a vision in which he was told that the 20th century was to be the devil’s century.  Heaven poured out grace in response.  There were more martyrs, people who gave their lives for Christ and his beleaguered bride, the Church, in the twentieth century than any other.

I refer you to the book Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century by Robert Royal, among others.  I would also claim that the twentieth century was far more miraculous than other time in history, including the times of Jesus and the early church!  Miracles are a far more common phenomenon today than in the past.

Let me mention a very few things, all of which I dare you to Google search.

There are always the Apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima, in 1917, in which perhaps 60,000 people witnessed a theophany, (a fancy theological terms meaning manifestation of God), that harkens back to the theophanies of Mt. Sinai in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Not only was this event witnessed by 60,000, it changed the  politics of Europe in ways that we are still feeling today.

If 60, 000 witnesses aren't enough for you, do a Google search on the word Zeitoun.

Our blessed Mother appeared on the roof of a Coptic church in Cairo a few times a week for almost three years beginning in 1968.  Millions of people, yes that's millions, saw the apparitions, including Gamel Abdul Nasser, the Muslim president of Egypt, reporters from the New York Times, lots of Muslims, Christians, and even some Jesuits!  The local Muslim authorities practically took the church apart to prove it was a fraud, but found nothing and were unable to deny the miracle.

How about Padre, now Saint, Pio of Pietralcina? 

Do a Google search on two names, first Gemma Di Giorgio and then Giovanni Savino.

Gemma was born blind without pupils in her eyes.  She was healed by the ministry of Padre Pio and can see, though she still has no pupils in her eyes.  I believe she is still alive today.  I remember reading a 1971 interview that she gave. 

More amazing is the story of Giovanni Savino who had an eye blown out by dynamite in addition to having the bone of his eye socket crushed.  He was visited by Padre Pio in the hospital and when the doctors examined him again the eye had come back.  Oh by the way, Pio never left the monastery.  He had the habit of being in two places at once.

There is a story told of a bomb run in the second world war.  The pilots never dropped their bombs on San Giovanni Rotondo, where Padre Pio’s monastery was located because there was always a monk standing on the clouds waving them off.  Finally exasperated, a commanding officer accompanied the flyers, and he too saw the monk on the clouds and canceled the order to bomb San Giovanni Rotondo.

I've read the story but I also know the cousin of one of the crew who would load the bombs and would have to unload them when the plane returned, bombs undropped!  Do a Google search.  I dare you.  Just try “Padre Pio, Bombs.”

How about Blessed Andre Bessete who died in 1937 in Montreal?  He was an amazing healer.

Or, the Venerable Solanus Casey of Detroit  who died in 1957?  My cousin was healed instantly of a mastoid bone infection by him when she was a little girl. The doctors who were to operate the next day sent her out of surgery.  There was nothing wrong with her.  One can go on and on.

As I write I can hear the sighs of the theologically  sophisticated, who are embarrassed by all this medieval clap trap.

Fr. Brankin, a friend and classmate, and one of the most accomplished priests in this archdiocese, makes the point that the divide in the Church today is not between so called liberals and conservatives, but between those who believe in the supernatural and those who do not.

The world is full of wonders and the presence of the divine is all around us, if we would  lift our eyes from the drab, gray, mechanistic world that claims to be scientific.  The science that you worship has given us air pollution and the bomb.  The modern religion of science is responsible for the slaughter of untold millions as the technology of murder is honed to an ever sharper sword point.

So, as your science threatens to wipe out the world, let us hope that St. Pio of Pietralcina is still standing on the clouds waving off the bombers, and let us hope that he has drafted the whole communion of saints, and just perhaps because of God’s miracles, the human race will resist the advances of science in the twenty first century.

Remember, Horatio, there is more in heaven and on earth than is dreamt of  in your philosophy.

The unsophisticated

Rev. Know-It-All