International Medical Committee of Lourdes secretary, Dr Patrick Theillier, has announced that the Church appointed committee will no longer decide whether cures qualify as miracles. The panel known by its French acronym, CMIL, decided over the weekend that it will still acknowledge cases of "remarkable" healing, but leave it up to the Church to decide whether they make the cut as miracles, Dr Theillier said, according to an International Herald Tribune report.
Dr Theillier said on Wednesday the move amounts to a call for the Church to update its centuries-old criteria about miracles.
"It's a sort of rebellion, if you will, against laws that don't concern us, and shouldn't," Dr Theillier said in a telephone interview.
"The medical corps must be independent of the ecclesiastic power."
"Before, what we presented to the Church was a gift all wrapped up and all the Church had to say was 'I approve,' without making a lot of effort," said Theillier, referring to the question of judging miracles.
"Not today."
He said the decision also grew out of a recent recognition within the medical community about its limits to diagnose and cure diseases or injuries compared to its mindset in the mid-to-late 20th century.
"The medical community isn't as sure of itself as it was 20 or 30 years ago," he said.
Back then, it was "much more triumphalist, and thought it knew everything before new illnesses cropped up to debunk that idea," he said.
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(Source: CTHN)